> How do people implement some larger features that are time consuming and require several days or months of work? Did tons of open source at work. A bulk of m

> How do people implement some larger features that are time consuming and require several days or months of work? Did tons of open source at work. A bulk of my open source early on was fixing gulp, grunt and jquery plugins that would often break when API's changed. To get your foot in the door, start by patching other people's projects. That can be as simple as a typo or adding docs initially. On any project, the first thing I do is almost always low hanging fruit. I clone it and try to build it from source on OS X, Debian, FreeBSD and fix anything wrong with the build system or tests. Often just right there I can get a few patches in or segue it into a larger fix [1] [2] I built up from doing small stuff to then doing big things, and eventually my own projects like tmuxp [3]. Small stuff means you get an opportunity to lurk and understand the codebase, tests and contribution guidelines. You can also find a mentor. Open source programmers are always looking for a protege who is passionate about the codebase. Hang out on IRC with them and say hi. Look at the milestones to see if there's any quick wins to get started with. If you work at a company that uses the project, be sure to mention it. :) [1]: https://github.com/python-cmake-buildsystem/python-cmake-buildsystem/commits?author=tony https://github.com/python-cmake-buildsystem/python-cmake-bui... [2]: https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/commits?author=tony https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/commits?author=tony [3]: https://tmuxp.git-pull.com https://tmuxp.git-pull.com