You don’t need to be an expert to contribute to a community

你不需要成为专家也能为社区做出贡献

Exactly that. You don’t need to be an “expert” in a specific language, or have: 5 years of experience, written the code that made a rocket reverse, or developed Claude 7 or GPT 999 to start contributing or helping a community. It sounds a bit comical, but it is the reality. 正是你所读到的那样。你不需要成为某种特定语言的“专家”，也不需要拥有 5 年的工作经验，更不需要写出让火箭倒退的代码，或者开发出 Claude 7 或 GPT 999 才能开始为社区做出贡献或提供帮助。这听起来有点滑稽，但却是事实。

Recently, something quite interesting happened that broke this “stigma” I had. I have been participating and interacting in some communities for a short time. In one of them, I participated in a weekly meeting where they separated some problems to be solved. For organizational purposes, “squads” were created, focused on solving modules with distinct problems. These problems were added as “Issues” on GitHub, and anyone interested in trying to solve them would be welcome. 最近发生了一件非常有趣的事情，打破了我心中原有的“偏见”。我参与并互动了一些社区已经有一段时间了。在其中一个社区里，我参加了他们的每周例会，会上他们分配了一些待解决的问题。为了便于组织，他们创建了“小组”（squads），专门负责解决不同模块的问题。这些问题被作为“Issue”添加到了 GitHub 上，任何有兴趣尝试解决的人都受到欢迎。

And this, with an emphasis on the following: Regardless of your knowledge level, whether you are an intern, junior, senior, or whatever: just fork it and try to solve the problem, don’t worry about it. 而且，他们特别强调了一点：无论你的知识水平如何，无论你是实习生、初级工程师、高级工程师还是其他什么身份：直接 fork 代码并尝试解决问题就好，不必为此担心。

Now comes the curious part: this repository where I ended up participating is built in Laravel, a PHP framework I had never had contact with before. With PHP, I had a little practice in college, where I only did CRUD and wrote the exam on paper (it was terrifying). Right, I knew the problem, but I didn’t know the language. Was that an impediment to helping? Of course not. 现在有趣的部分来了：我参与的这个仓库是使用 Laravel 构建的，这是一个我以前从未接触过的 PHP 框架。关于 PHP，我大学时只有过一点点实践，当时只做了 CRUD，而且考试还是在纸上写的（那真是太可怕了）。没错，我知道问题所在，但我并不懂这门语言。这会成为我提供帮助的障碍吗？当然不会。

Basically, I used Claude Code to help with this, since I didn’t know much about Laravel, but I knew how to read code and understand its logic. Therefore, since the code will be reviewed by other experienced people, if there is any loose point that was not well written, they will point it out and correct it. That is how a contribution cycle works. 基本上，我利用 Claude Code 来辅助完成这项工作，因为我不了解 Laravel，但我懂得如何阅读代码并理解其逻辑。因此，由于代码会由其他有经验的人进行审查，如果有什么写得不好的地方，他们会指出来并进行修正。这就是贡献循环的工作方式。

And with that in mind, for the first time in 3 years in this field, I had 2 PRs approved in an open-source repository! Modeling the back-end module of the Discord Bot. 带着这种心态，我在这个领域工作 3 年以来，第一次在开源仓库中成功合并了 2 个 PR！分别是 Discord 机器人的后端模块建模。

It may seem silly, but it is something very interesting to do and participate in. Because the software life cycle is not just about code; any AI can write code. The big issue is knowing what you are working on and understanding the purpose of what is being developed. In short, we are developing a product that can help multiple people. 这看起来可能很傻，但参与其中是一件非常有意义的事情。因为软件生命周期不仅仅是关于代码，任何 AI 都能写代码。关键在于你要知道自己在做什么，并理解所开发内容的初衷。简而言之，我们正在开发一个能够帮助许多人的产品。

Furthermore, many large companies look favorably upon those who help develop open-source projects. If you feel like trying something similar, He4rt has several other open repositories, and anyone can submit a PR and suggest modifications; it is not mandatory, it is just by your own will. Any help will be very welcome. And if you have any questions or get stuck at any point, no problem: just join the community and ask for help. That is basically what it exists for. 此外，许多大公司非常看重那些参与开源项目开发的人。如果你想尝试类似的事情，He4rt 还有许多其他开放的仓库，任何人都可以提交 PR 并提出修改建议；这并非强制，完全出于自愿。任何帮助都非常受欢迎。如果你有任何疑问或在某个环节卡住了，没关系：只需加入社区寻求帮助即可。这基本上就是社区存在的意义。

If you liked the article, leave a heart there, and don’t forget to join the He4rt Discord server! Link: https://discord.gg/vfCNzybFj6 如果你喜欢这篇文章，请点个赞，也别忘了加入 He4rt 的 Discord 服务器！链接：https://discord.gg/vfCNzybFj6