Hacktoberfest is officalially over

Hacktoberfest is now officially over, but i'm not sure if i should be happy or sad. Im glad that its over because it means i can finally stop trying to rush through PR's to have them submitted on time, but i'm also a bit sad that its over because it was a lot of fun and i learned a lot.

During the month of October, we were required to submit 4 pull requests in order to qualify to win a free Hacktoberfest T-shirt. I think for the month of October i had 5 or 6 in total, 2 of them being genuine PR's for some of my other classes. Although we had learned how to create and submit PR's in class, it was definitely not the same when your'e submitting to other developer. For some reason it seemed a little more real, or maybe it just seemed like you had more on the line vs when your'e doing practice PR's in class.

When i was first starting off, it was a lot scarier submitting my first PR, because i was afraid of messing something up. For example if you do something wrong in class, its not really that big of a deal, it seems like the expectations are lower and your'e among other students that are at the same level as you. Where as making a mistake while submitting a real PR, it feels like it would be the end of the world because everyone on the internet will see it. But after finishing Hacktoberfest, i started to realize that most of the people at the other end of the PR's are developers just like the rest of us, they aren't some programming gods just waiting to reject our code for fun. Now thats not to say everyone is going to have the same experience, but every interaction that i had with other developers was great, and they were grateful and sometimes even surprised that people were contributing to their projects and that felt really great.

All in all, id say Hacktoberfest was definitely a success for me, i got some great real world experience in the open source community and i also won a free shirt which is kinda cool. Going forward, id say i definitely want to keep contributing to open source projects, not for a prize but just because it feels great to have a hand in something that could potentially be shipped out to thousands of users around the world, and its always a great way to learn new things and gain experience. If anyone reading this is contemplating about joining the open source community or would like to just get started, i can confidently say that you should start immediately because it'll be one of the best decisions you'll ever make.

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