Why High School Is the Perfect Time to Start Contributing to Open Source

Description and use

The article shows how a high‑school student made a first accepted pull request to SymPy using GitHub, Codespaces, and MyPy, gaining mentorship and proving that beginners can contribute to large projects.

Problem

High school students often feel they lack experience and confidence to contribute to large open‑source projects.

Outcome

The student successfully contributed type hints to SymPy, received mentorship, and earned a merged PR, proving that high‑schoolers can start contributing to large projects.

Workflow

• 1. Identify a project that matches interests (SymPy).
• 2. Search for beginner‑friendly or good first issue labels on GitHub.
• 3. Use GitHub Codespaces to edit code in the browser without cloning locally.
• 4. Select a small, manageable issue (add type hints to solvers module).
• 5. Read MyPy error logs to understand type requirements.
• 6. Implement changes and run tests in the Codespace.
• 7. Commit changes and open a pull request.
• 8. Address review comments, iterate, and re‑run CI.
• 9. Merge when approved and celebrate the merged badge.

Evidence

I explored the project’s issues and stumbled upon the “beginner-friendly” labels.

Source

I simply spun up a GitHub-hosted environment to edit and run the code directly from my browser.

Source

After some back‑and‑forth, fixing things, and learning a ton from my mentor’s feedback, my code was finally approved.

Source