When we start our careers, we immediately feel the lack of experience. This feeling first arises when we send our resumes to companies. You are probably familiar with the situation where you receive responses like: "Sorry, but we cannot proceed with your application because you do not have practical experience" or "After careful consideration, we have decided to choose another candidate." Such messages can be received even by developers with some experience, but today we will focus on those who have little experience and nothing to show in their portfolios.
The solution to this problem is quite simple — "open source." Everyone is familiar with the GitHub platform, where it is customary to host open-source projects.
Let's first understand what "open source" is. Open-source projects are those projects to which you can have free access. You can read the codebase, fork the project, make your changes, contribute, and help develop the project. It may sound a bit confusing, so let's look at an example.
For instance, there is a project called Material UI. It is a library that allows you to use ready-made components in your application. It's pretty cool, right? You can simply install the npm package into your project and use the ready-made components. But, of course, these components do not appear out of nowhere. They are developed by programmers, and someone writes the documentation for this project to make it easy for you to use this tool.
You should make the most of this approach. As a developer without projects and extensive experience, you can become a participant who develops such a project. You can choose the most interesting issue for you and start development. You can also participate in discussions about how to develop a particular feature. The most important thing you get is code review. This is probably the most valuable part of this process, as you get feedback on your code from experienced developers.
What will you gain over time? You could potentially become a contributor to a well-known project, gain valuable experience, earn a reputation in the community, and possibly even become a famous open-source developer. The most important thing you will gain is experience that you can demonstrate to your potential employer.
In this case, you will be in a pretty strong position. Most developers overlook the importance of open-source projects.