Solving problems
This brings us to the next big skill, and probably the most important skill as a software developer: solving problems. No doubt that open source projects focus on solving problems, so being part of an open source project will help you improve that skill, but here are a few things you can do to make it even more effective.
Use the project in your current position
The first thing you can do is to use the open source project! Find ways you can use the project in your daily job. Use it as a way to solve problems in your company and your current projects. This is just the obvious. Of course, you can fix problems in the open source project itself. To be amazing at solving problems, you need to be an expert in identifying the correct problem and understanding what is going on. Every open source project has complaints from users where the details are unclear or the user was not able to articulate the issue. When it is not clear to anyone in the development team what...