Written by: Callum Whyte
Every Tuesday at 12pm (UK time) I go live on my Twitch channel and stream my Hacktoberfest contributions. I started last year and really enjoyed it, a few people asked if I’d do it again so I’m back for 2021!
I know I’d just leave Hacktoberfest to the last minute otherwise... Having a weekly plan helps keep my contributions on track without being too taxing. It’s a great way to flex some different coding muscles, fix something that frustrates me, or just check out some projects I haven’t had time to look at yet. I also thought it would be a cool way to break down some of the barriers around contributing to open source in the hope that it inspires someone else to perhaps make their first contribution.
I choose something I think is achievable in ~1 hour and just have a go! I aim to highlight a different technology each week – last year I did C#, AngularJs, CSS, Lucene, markdown docs, and had a look at the maintainers side of open-source too. It’s supposed to be a learning experience, for me and the audience. I take extra care to articulate what I’m doing and thinking so the audience can follow along with the journey. It’s a lot harder than you’d think so I prepare the stream a bit beforehand to ensure it flows properly and to preempt any issues – it’s easier to talk through a problem when you’ve already solved it ;-)
Tune in to my stream every Tuesday! It can be lonely just talking to my camera and nice to see some friendly faces in the chat. Naturally I get stuck and make mistakes, so having people to point me in the right direction is great!
Portmanteau. Learning!
We’re thrilled to say that we are once again joining in with the Hack-tastic Hacktoberfest this October! And yes, that is very soon (like, 2 days soon), so let’s jump in and see how to get involved and earn some swag, shall we? 😍