How to use Pieces to survive Hacktoberfest

Ah fall, the season known for cool breezes, pumpkin-spice-flavored drinks and cookies(or whatever baked goods that you enjoy), Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Hacktoberfest. 

Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration in October where people celebrate open source projects by making code and no-code contributions to them. It’s like the Oktoberfest Festival in Germany without the giant mugs of root beer. 

The heck do we write this article in December? Well, it’s all about planning ahead and preparing yourself for Hacktoberfest #12. 

In this article, I will briefly introduce you to Pieces and explain how it can help you survive and increase your chances of winning Hacktoberfest. 

What is the purpose of Hacktoberfest?

In addition to celebrating the awesomeness of open source, Hacktoberfest aims to make open source more accessible and inclusive. 

This event provides an opportunity for individuals from diverse backgrounds and skill levels to learn, contribute, and connect with the open-source community. 

By participating, developers can enhance their coding abilities, technical writers can refine their documentation skills, graphic designers can contribute their creative talents, and people who don’t work in the tech industry can gain some technical skills. 

Also, Hacktoberfest fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing, which strengthens the open source ecosystem and empowers people to become active contributors to projects that benefit countless users worldwide. 

Is Hacktoberfest worth it? 

Hacktoberfest can be pretty intimidating, especially if you are new to open source. 

You need to find projects that align with your skills and interests, navigate the unique workflows of each project (which can take time), and aim to submit four quality pull requests at the end of October. 

Despite these challenges, Hacktoberfest is a great experience. 

You'll not only enhance your technical skills but also connect with a vibrant community of developers. 

Remember, the key to a successful Hacktoberfest experience lies in patience, planning, and leveraging helpful tools like Gemini 2.0 or the star of this article, Pieces. 

How to increase your chances of winning Hacktoberfest 

Picture this, you found the open source project of your dreams after doing a long search on GitHub (or GitLab) and picked an issue that matches your tech stack (or non-technical skillset). 

Just when you are about to get started in creating your contribution, a realization hits you like cold water being poured on your head “I have no idea how to write this line of code”. 

So you sit there and wonder how you will be able to create your contribution.  

This is where the Live Context feature in Piece’s Co-Pilot chat comes in and saves the day. 

It looks back at the content you recently viewed on your computer and the co-pilot chat uses it to respond to the questions you use as prompts. 

It’s like a time machine but without the worry of destroying your future.  

For example, I have been working on fixing the following bug I found in an HTML file  in one of the lessons in Codedex’s CSS 101 repository:

<h2>Our Story</h2>
 <p>For over 15 years, we have provided an impactful, results-focused tutoring experience to all of our pupils!</p>
 <p>It all started as homework-help between two friends at the library. One friend needed the other's help with algebra and how they could apply it in everyday life.</p>
 img id="story-image" src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2022/11/21/09/43/success-7606515_1280.jpg" alt="" />
 <h2>Contact</h2>
 <p>Interested in upskilling with Rendezvous Tutoring? Feel free to sign-up with your e-mail below to learn more!</p>
 <form>
 <input type="email" placeholder="e-mail here" required />
 <input type="submit" value="Sign Up" />
  <

Save this code

First, I created the image’s descriptive alt text and did this to add the  <label> tags to the email for the email input:

<img id="story-image" src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2022/11/21/09/43/success-7606515_1280.jpg" alt="An image of someone growing success in tutoring" />   
      <form>
        <label for="email">Email:</label>
        <input type="email" id="email" placeholder="e-mail here" required>
        <input type="submit" value="Sign up">
      </form>

Save this code

Even though fixing this bug was pretty simple,  I was slightly unsure if I formatted the <label> tag for the email’s input correctly.  

So, I went to the Pieces Chrome Extension, clicked on the Co-Pilot chat tab, turned on the Live Context button, typed the prompt “How can I make the email input more accessible”, and got the following suggestion:

<form>
  <label for="email">Email:</label>
  <input type="email" id="email" placeholder="e-mail here" required />
  <button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>

Save this code

Turns out, I was right! 🙂 So, I kept the code as is, got it reviewed by one of the maintainers, merged, and it became among the list of approved pull requests in my Hacktoberfest profile.  

 Now before I start rambling about how great the Live Context button is, there's just one more feature I want to mention that can help make your Hacktoberfest experience bearable! 😀

Showcasing your Hacktoberfest contributions

If you want to showcase some of the contributions you make during Hacktoberfest, but don't know how to add them, use Piece’s code snippets feature. 

You highlight a piece of code from any GitHub repository and save it on the Pieces Desktop application and Chrome extension. 

From there, you have the option to edit the description in the Context Preview section of your saved code snippet and generate a link for it. 

As a technical writer, I use this feature to preserve code snippets that I want to add to my portfolio or blog posts where I talk about how I created my contributions or do coding tutorials. 

For example, I worked on a tutorial for Mautic's MailChimp plugin and plan on using the saved code snippet as a sample for my portfolio or a blog post about technical writing or any coding-related topic. The possibilities are endless! 🙂

Now it’s your turn

Whether it’s to save code snippets for portfolio samples and content that you create or chat with the co-pilot feature to help you understand a bug you struggle with fixing, Pieces can help Hacktoberfest a less scary experience. 

Now enough talking, download Pieces, and start contributing! 🙂