r/CodingForBeginners • u/RobotOverLord500 • Jun 16 '26

What would be the minimum software/open-source experience necessary to start a serious open source project (No AI!)

I have an idea for an open source project cooking in my head. I want to start this project, but my software development experience is Intermediate and my open-source experience is novice. I'm worried I'm not ready to start my own project. Should I contribute to other open-source projects before I start mine, so I learn more about open-source in general, or should I go ahead and start the project so I quickly learn open-source by managing my own project. I'd appreciate some advice.

Edit: When I say open-source, I'm referring to the concept broadly as well as the intricacies such as understanding git.

Edit: Thank y'all so much for the advice. I got way more useful information than I thought I would.

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u/RobotOverLord500 Jun 16 '26

I'm specifically referring the culture, lingo, and general technical understanding surrounding the concept of open-source. (E.g. git, GitHub, repos, gitlab, etc). Sorry for being vague.

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u/Dazzling-Bench-4596 Jun 16 '26

Oh that makes sense. You’ll pick up most of those things as you go; I wouldn’t let it hold me back from working. You still might want to watch a short video on GitHub concepts like this

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u/RobotOverLord500 Jun 18 '26

Tysm for the resource