Hacktoberfest: Your Journey from Student to Developer

What Actually Is Hacktoberfest?

Right so Hacktoberfest is this brilliant month-long celebration of open source software that happens every October, organised by DigitalOcean along with a load of community sponsors. Think of it as a massive global event where developers from around the world, from complete beginners to seasoned professionals, come together to contribute to open source projects. The beauty of it is that there's no complicated eligibility criteria, if you've got a GitHub or GitLab account and you're willing to learn, you're in.

The whole idea behind Hacktoberfest is pretty straightforward really. A huge chunk of the technology we use every day, from major commercial products to the tools developers rely on, is built on open source software. These projects are often maintained by passionate individuals and small teams who don't have massive budgets or huge staff numbers. They're doing it because they believe in the power of collaborative software development and want to create tools that benefit everyone. Hacktoberfest gives the wider community a structured opportunity to give back to these projects by fixing bugs, improving documentation, adding features or even just tidying up code.

Here's what makes it special though. During October you register on the Hacktoberfest website, make contributions to participating open source repositories, and if you complete the challenge you earn digital badges through Holopin that showcase your achievement. Since 2025 they've changed things up a bit, the old days of everyone getting a free t-shirt are gone because the event grew too massive, but now if you're a super contributor who completes six accepted pull or merge requests you can be one of the first 10,000 people to get an exclusive Hacktoberfest t-shirt plus they'll plant a tree in your name through TreeNation. It's not just about the swag though, although that's nice, it's about the learning experience and being part of a global movement.

From Beginner to Developer: The Transformation Journey

Let's talk about something that doesn't get mentioned enough in all those coding bootcamp adverts and university brochures. There's this massive gap between learning to code and actually being a developer, and it's not about knowing more programming languages or memorising more algorithms. It's about confidence, real-world experience and understanding how software actually gets built in practice. That's the gap Hacktoberfest helps you bridge.

When you're a student or just starting out you spend most of your time working on your own little projects or following tutorials. You write code, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but either way nobody else is looking at it or using it. Then suddenly you're expected to work on real projects with other people, deal with codebases you didn't write, follow contribution guidelines and collaborate with developers who might be on the other side of the world. That leap can feel absolutely terrifying if you've never done it before.

Hacktoberfest creates a safe environment to practise all of this. The projects that participate specifically opt in and often create beginner-friendly issues just for the event. Maintainers expect newcomers and are generally really helpful and patient. You get to experience the entire workflow of professional software development, from finding an issue to work on, forking a repository, making changes, testing them, documenting what you've done and submitting a pull request. Then you wait for feedback, respond to code reviews and potentially make more changes based on what the maintainers suggest. This is exactly what you'll be doing as a professional developer except now you're learning in a supportive community environment where making mistakes is completely expected and accepted.

What's particularly valuable is that you stop being just a student or just a beginner. You become someone who contributes, someone who shows up and does the work in public where everyone can see it. That shift in identity matters more than you might think. When you can point to actual contributions in real open source projects that people use, you're no longer trying to convince potential employers that you can code, you're showing them proof that you already do. Your GitHub profile transforms from a graveyard of half-finished tutorials into a portfolio of real contributions to genuine projects. That's the kind of signal that stands out on CVs, in interviews and inside actual development teams.

The skills you develop during Hacktoberfest extend beyond just coding too. You learn how to read and understand other people's code, which is honestly a massive part of professional development work. You get experience with version control systems like Git in a realistic setting where mistakes have consequences but aren't catastrophic. You practise communicating about technical decisions, explaining your approach and responding constructively to feedback. You learn about project structure, contribution guidelines, coding standards and all those professional practices that don't really come up when you're coding alone in your bedroom at 2 AM.

How to Actually Contribute: The Practical Guide

Alright let's get into the actual mechanics of how you participate in Hacktoberfest because knowing what to do is one thing but knowing how to do it is what actually matters. The first thing you need to do is head over to hacktoberfest.com between September and the end of October and register with your GitHub or GitLab account. That's it for registration really, just authorise the connection and you're officially participating. The website will then track your contributions automatically throughout October.

Now comes the part that trips up a lot of beginners, finding a project to contribute to. The easiest way is to search for repositories with the hacktoberfest topic on GitHub or GitLab. These are projects that have specifically opted in to participate and are actively looking for contributions. You can refine this search by adding programming languages you know, so if you're comfortable with JavaScript you'd search for hacktoberfest javascript and you'll find relevant projects. Don't just pick the first thing you see though, take some time to find a project that genuinely interests you because you'll be more motivated to contribute meaningfully rather than just ticking boxes.

For absolute beginners there are some brilliant curated platforms that make finding suitable issues much easier. Good First Issue collects issues that maintainers have specifically marked as appropriate for first-time contributors, these are usually well-defined tasks with clear requirements. Up For Grabs aggregates projects with tasks explicitly available for anyone to tackle whilst First Timers Only guides you through the entire contribution workflow and highlights issues reserved exclusively for people making their first contribution. During October these platforms get pretty busy though, so the easiest issues can disappear quickly which can be frustrating. A smarter approach once you've got a bit of experience is to find a project you actually use or care about, use the software properly and you might spot bugs or improvements yourself, then you can propose your own issue and offer to fix it which maintainers absolutely love.

When you're looking at issues pay attention to the labels. The ones you want are good first issue, help-wanted, beginner-friendly or of course hacktoberfest. These are direct signals from maintainers that the task is suitable for someone who's not familiar with the project. Read the issue description carefully, check if anyone else has already claimed it by looking at the comments and make sure you actually understand what needs doing before you start. If you're not sure about something, ask questions in the issue comments, that's what they're there for and maintainers would much rather answer questions upfront than review a pull request that completely misunderstood the requirements.

Once you've found an issue you want to work on, here's the typical workflow. Fork the repository which creates your own copy that you can modify without affecting the original. Clone your forked repository to your local machine so you can actually work on the code. Create a new branch for your changes, never work directly on the main branch because that makes everything messy. Make your changes, test them thoroughly, write clear commit messages that explain what you've done and why. Push your branch to your forked repository on GitHub or GitLab. Then create a pull request from your branch to the original repository's main branch, this is where you explain what you've changed and why it solves the issue. The maintainers will review your pull request, they might ask for changes or improvements, you make those changes and push them to the same branch and the pull request updates automatically. Eventually if everything looks good they'll merge your contribution and congratulations, you've just contributed to open source.

Here's something important that doesn't get talked about enough, you don't have to be a coding wizard to contribute. Whilst coding contributions are obviously valuable, there are loads of other ways to help open source projects. Documentation is absolutely massive, if you can write clearly and explain things well, improving or creating documentation is incredibly valuable and often desperately needed. You can help translate projects into other languages if you're multilingual, design graphics or user interfaces if that's your skill, write tutorials or guides for using the software, test new features and report bugs, triage issues by reproducing bugs and gathering information or even just improve the project's website or README file. These non-code contributions are just as valid for Hacktoberfest and honestly they're often more accessible for complete beginners.

What You'll Actually Gain From This

Let's be honest about what Hacktoberfest gives you beyond a digital badge and maybe a t-shirt if you're fast enough. The real value is in how it transforms your relationship with software development and your confidence as a developer. You learn to work with codebases you didn't create, which is literally what you'll spend most of your professional career doing. You get comfortable with version control workflows that seemed mysterious before. You develop the ability to read documentation, understand contribution guidelines and figure out how a project is structured without someone holding your hand through every step.

The feedback you receive from code reviews is invaluable because you're getting guidance from experienced developers who maintain real projects. They'll point out things you didn't know, suggest better approaches and teach you professional practices that you wouldn't learn from tutorials. This mentorship aspect of Hacktoberfest is honestly one of its most valuable features even though it's not explicitly advertised. You're essentially getting free code reviews from people who know what they're doing and who want to help you improve.

Perhaps most importantly you build a visible track record of contributions that you can show to potential employers or clients. Your GitHub profile stops being a homework repository and becomes a portfolio demonstrating that you can contribute to real projects, work with teams, follow coding standards and deliver valuable improvements. When you're applying for jobs or internships and someone looks at your GitHub, seeing actual contributions to established open source projects tells them far more about your abilities than any personal project could. It shows initiative, ability to learn independently, capacity to work with others and commitment to improving your skills.

The networking aspect shouldn't be underestimated either. You'll interact with developers from around the world, some of whom might end up being future colleagues or collaborators. The open source community is surprisingly interconnected and making a good impression during Hacktoberfest can lead to opportunities you never expected. People remember contributors who are helpful, professional and genuinely interested in improving projects rather than just collecting pull requests.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Right so let's talk about what can go wrong because Hacktoberfest has had its share of problems over the years. The biggest issue is spam contributions, people making meaningless pull requests just to complete the challenge without adding any actual value. This was such a problem that the organisers completely overhauled the rules. Now repositories have to explicitly opt in by adding the hacktoberfest topic and maintainers have to approve contributions. If you submit spammy pull requests you'll get flagged and disqualified, so don't do it.

What counts as spam? Automated pull requests that just remove whitespace or fix tiny formatting issues without meaningful improvement, pull requests that don't actually address any real issue or need, changes to your own repositories just to get pull request numbers or anything that's clearly low-effort and designed just to game the system. The organisers and maintainers have seen it all and they're not having it. If you're not sure whether your contribution adds value, ask yourself honestly whether the project is better off with your change than without it.

Another common mistake is not reading the contributing guidelines. Every serious open source project has a CONTRIBUTING.md file that explains how they want contributions to be made. Some projects want you to open an issue before making a pull request, others have specific coding styles or require certain tests to be written, some have templates for pull request descriptions. Ignoring these guidelines frustrates maintainers because it means they have to spend time explaining things that are already documented and your pull request might get rejected just for not following the process.

Don't make massive pull requests for your first contribution either. Start small with something simple like fixing a typo in documentation, adding a comment to confusing code or improving an error message. Get comfortable with the workflow before you try to add major features or refactor significant portions of code. Small contributions are more likely to get reviewed quickly, they're easier for maintainers to assess and they help you build confidence without overwhelming yourself.

Finally don't get discouraged if your first few pull requests get rejected or require lots of changes. That's completely normal and it's part of the learning process. The best contributors are the ones who respond professionally to feedback, make the requested changes and learn from the experience. Nobody expects perfection from first-time contributors, what matters is your willingness to learn and improve. If a pull request gets rejected, thank the maintainer for their feedback, learn from it and try again with another issue.

Making It Count Beyond October

Here's something nobody tells you about Hacktoberfest, the real magic happens when you don't stop at the end of October. The event is designed to introduce you to open source contribution but the actual goal is for you to keep contributing afterwards. Many successful developers started their open source journey during Hacktoberfest and never stopped. They found projects they cared about, became regular contributors and some eventually became maintainers themselves.

Think about what you genuinely use and care about. Is there a library you use in your projects? A tool that could be improved? A framework you're learning? These are all potential contribution opportunities. When you contribute to projects you actually use, your motivation is completely different because you're not just completing a challenge, you're improving tools you rely on and making them better for yourself and everyone else who uses them. That's when open source contribution stops feeling like a task and starts feeling like genuine collaboration.

The skills you develop through contributing to open source are directly transferable to professional development work. Reading and understanding existing codebases, working with distributed teams, following coding standards, writing clear documentation, responding to code reviews, these are all essential professional skills that you'll use every single day as a developer. The more you practise them through open source contribution, the more prepared you'll be for actual employment.

Your Next Steps

If you're reading this and thinking about participating in the next Hacktoberfest or just getting involved with open source in general, here's my advice. Don't wait until you feel ready because you'll never feel completely ready, that's just how learning works. Start with something small, maybe fix a typo in documentation or add a comment explaining something that confused you when you first looked at the code. Get comfortable with the process before you try to tackle bigger issues.

Join the community. Hacktoberfest has a Discord server where you can meet other participants, ask questions and get help. There are communities around specific programming languages, frameworks and tools where people are usually happy to guide newcomers. Don't try to do everything alone because that's not how open source works, it's fundamentally about collaboration and community.

Document your journey. Write about what you're learning, the challenges you face and how you overcome them. This helps you process the experience, creates a record you can look back on and might help other beginners who are facing similar challenges. Some people write blog posts about their Hacktoberfest experience, others just keep notes for themselves, either way the act of reflection makes the learning stick better.

Most importantly, remember why you're doing this. It's not really about the badges or t-shirts although those are nice. It's about transforming yourself from someone who just uses software into someone who creates and improves it. It's about joining a global community of developers who believe in collaboration, openness and making technology accessible to everyone. It's about proving to yourself that you can contribute meaningfully to real projects that matter.

Hacktoberfest opens a door that leads to so much more than a month of contributions. It can be the beginning of your journey from student to developer, from observer to participant, from someone who learns alone to someone who builds together with others. The question isn't whether you should participate, it's why you haven't started already. Pick a project, find an issue, make that first contribution. The open source community is waiting for your unique perspective and contributions, you don't need to be an expert, you just need to be willing to learn, contribute and grow.