For my next project to contribute to for Hacktoberfest23, I decided to work on Software Engineering Unlocked, which is a repository that holds transcripts for the Software Engineering Unlocked Podcast to make it more accessible. The podcast provides a sneak peek into how software companies around the world develop software and developers from small startups to large companies come to talk about their useful experiences.
The Issue
There wasn't an issue that was open at the time I found the repo, but I noticed that within the README, it said that if we could find a transcript that needed to be improved, we could create an issue for it. After skimming through a few transcripts, I found that Episode #58 featuring Cat Hicks needed to be improved on, and so I created an issue for it.
Process
There was no setup needed to work on this issue, as it just required me to make my changes within the markdown transcript file. There were a few general formatting questions I had, but I noticed that there were many other issues that were created prior to mine which were also about "improving an episode" and I was able to find the answers based on the questions they had asked the owner of the repo. Also, after reading the Transcription_Guidelines.md file, I had a good sense of the changes I needed to make, and forked the repo and created a new branch to work on.
Implementing Changes
I initially went into this issue thinking that it wouldn't take much time to find errors and fix the transcript, but I was quite wrong. While I was editing the transcript, there were numerous times where I had to rewind the podcast recording to make sure I was hearing the words right and making the appropriate changes. There were also times where the auto-generated transcript had incorrectly spelled tech terms and I needed to do external research on the guest speaker to accurately understand the terms used.
The list of changes that I made to the transcript were:
- Spelling and punctuation fixes
- Addition of missing dialogue
- Addition of relevant non-text audio in parentheses
- Syncing timestamps
- Maintaining <= 80 character limit per line
- Removal of duplicated filler words
After sending the owner a friendly reminder, the PR that I submitted was approved and successfully merged.
Learning Outcomes
Prior to my open-source journey, I thought I needed to work on code-specific issues to actually provide valuable contributions to a project, but I'm glad I got to contribute to Software Engineering Unlocked. Listening to the podcast recording was quite valuable to myself as I got to learn some new tech terms and got to hear about the experiences of a senior developer. This was a lesson for me that open-source contributions can come in many forms and issues such as just improving a markdown file is just as important to a project's success. Looking forward to the next project to contribute to!
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