Or make contributions to something you use that is small and self contained. All the examples here seem way too big to get started with IMO. Take "Ubuntu", it

Or make contributions to something you use that is small and self contained. All the examples here seem way too big to get started with IMO. Take "Ubuntu", it covers so much! You're better off fixing bugs upstream in the individual projects that interest you than rushing headlong into the Ubuntu bureaucracy-fest. Dunno about Drupal or LO. The latter did have a lot of publicized cleaning up done recently. Might be better nowadays? Still a massive codebase though. Python seems like the "easiest" contender - it compiles without many dependencies in a few minutes on a fast machine, and has good docs - but the article already hints that there's not much low-hanging fruit left.