Recently over the past few years, open source culture has found its credibility and made a strong position for itself. Many popular organizations like google(kubernetes), twitter(recommender system) have made parts of their code bases fully open source for aspiring software developers to contribute and benefit the community.
Why exactly Open Source ?
Before I move further into the topic of discussion, I feel I must convince readers like you , why exactly one should even bother practicing open source contributions. I with many other naive individuals have thought "Why work for free ?" or "What's the point.. !". The Only point around which the entire concept of open source pivots is community development. The Things you develop are used by the community, which is I think the most justified and glorified "cause". What you get as a byproduct is also immeasurable I feel. To list down a few things :
Your contributions, show your skills and the amount of dedication you put in (proof of work).
You aren't only just benefitting the community, but you are upskilling yourself as well.
Open source contributions also open up the paths to get several more- than-average paying job opportunities across the globe.
Overview
My Journey in open source started with a very fumble start. Not being able to identify and select an appropriate project was one of the many problems I faced initially. Eventually after researching, I stumbled upon this amazing project striving to revolutionalize solar physics in the 21st century.
Sunpy is entirely based in Python with a few c extension files. This makes it perfect for beginners and makes the codebase relatively easier to understand than most of the other projects out there. Personally, I was attracted to Sunpy because I never in my college life had seen a library just to handle solar and astrophysics. Initially, I struggled to understand the working of the code and how all the files were interlinked. This issue is something that all beginners face, but by putting in some time hauled by efforts you should be able to at least track down the functions which are producing the results.
The project has pretty well-detailed, maintained and up-to-date documentation. Always refer to the documentation when stuck. It simplifies the process of comprehending the code. The documentation supports appropriate examples with clean code snippets, which helped me a lot to design code from the user's perspective.
Sunpy also participates in GSOC every year, so aspirants can pull up their socks and work it off into GSOC. You can check out their previous projects to get a gist of how things look in Sunpy. The organization also has a community chatroom, and honestly one of the best parts is that the community is very active, and interactive and provides great deal of beginner support.
Overall the 3 months I spent with this organization were special and I wish everyone here who is reading this blog to check out this amazing project, contribute well and glorify the future of solarphysics.
Good Luck !