First time contributor, need help with documentation PR

[Maxim Kupfer]

I'm trying to add a minor fix to the documentation, but feel utterly lost. I looked over the contributing guide and it says that I don't need to be the developer type to contribute, but then it dives into building a development environment which then gets too technical for me. 

Anyway someone can explain this to a person that doesn't have any previous git and c compiler experience. I'm more than happy to contribute, I just want to first understand what I'm even doing.

Thanks,

Maxim

[Joshua Devlin]

> Anyway someone can explain this to a person that doesn't have any previous git and c compiler experience

The reality is that without some git experience you may struggle.  It's worth taking some time to learn the git basics if you want to contribute.  https://try.github.io/levels/1/challenges/1 is as good a place as any.

Your timing is also good though, in 2 days time there is a big pandas documentation sprint happening: https://python-sprints.github.io/pandas/  If there's one near you, you could rock up and learn a lot of what you need to learn.  Otherwise, if there's not, you could benefit from some of the associated support materials:

- https://python-sprints.github.io/pandas/guide/pandas_pr.html

- https://python-sprints.github.io/pandas/guide/pandas_docstring.html

I hope this nudges you in the right directions.

Josh

Dataquest.io

[Chris Bartak]

Ultimately, git is a relatively useful skill, so there is something to be said for learning it.  I think many people, myself included, find the learning curve steep.  For me it was a function of time, exposure, and practice that got me over it, and no better way to learn than contributing to pandas!

That said, Github does have an edit interface - not something I've used, but for small documentation changes, seems like it could be pretty nice, you could try that too

https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files-in-your-repository/

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[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 4:01 PM, Chris Bartak <cba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ultimately, git is a relatively useful skill, so there is something to be
> said for learning it. I think many people, myself included, find the
> learning curve steep. For me it was a function of time, exposure, and
> practice that got me over it, and no better way to learn than contributing
> to pandas!

I should say in contrast, that I am one of many people that have found
that spending an hour or two learning how git works, gave me a huge
kick-start to my ability to use and learn git.

For example, see the various quotes at
https://matthew-brett.github.io/curious-git/curious_intro.html

Cheers,

Matthew

[Joshua Devlin]

Just wanted to pop back to clarify that I wasn't saying don't try learning git - I agree with all of the above, it's one of the most useful things you'll do.

Every dev goes through it, so if you get yourself tangled don't be afraid to reach out to someone you know for help (the python sprint would be an awesome opportunity for this!)

[Matthew Brett]

".Hi,

On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 3:05 PM, Joshua Devlin <joshua...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just wanted to pop back to clarify that I wasn't saying don't try learning
> git - I agree with all of the above, it's one of the most useful things
> you'll do.

Yes, sorry, I was responding to Chris Bartak who said "For me it was a
function of time, exposure, and practice that got me over it". I'm
not denying that does also work, but if it were me talking to my
just-starting self, I'd strongly recommend the investment in a few
hours learning the model. I'm sure y'all know some version of this
famous joke:

"A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of
hours in the library." [1]

Cheers,

Matthew

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frank_Westheimer