Each open-source community has its own rules and roles. Open-source projects are about creating communities in which coders and developers can help each other learn and then grow together (Nyakundi, 2023).

There are a few ways in which a beginner contributor can choose the community they want to help out: either by skill (how good of a coder they are), by goal (what they want to achieve), by finding a project (first issues on github etc), or by interest.

The reason I chose to contribute to Strudel was because I am really interested in live music coding. Thought it would be a great way to learn more about it and to have the chance to experiment more with it.

Another reason why I chose to contribute to this community, is to improve my JavaScript skills as I am eager to become better at it.

The community seems to encourage new contributors. They have a ReadMe file in which they mention what a new contributor could do or how they can help out. The Strudel community also has a Discord channel where you can notify that you have noticed a bug or a feature that needs to be modified or improved. They are also encouraging documentation contributions. In the readme file they have different tips and suggestions for the new contributors, such as how to clone the project etc. They also have a list of issues open and anyone is welcome to try and solve any of them.

I also chose this community, because I like the idea of having tidal cycles on a web platform. I think it is a very helpful tool that could encourage more people in trying out live music coding.

From what I have noticed from the Strudel GitHub and Discord, it is quite a small community formed of passionate coders and musicians.

Bibliography

Nyakundi, H. (2023) How to contribute to open source projects – a beginner’s guide, freeCodeCamp.org. Available at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-contribute-to-open-source-projects-beginners-guide/ (Accessed: 04 May 2023).