I submitted my first pull request back in November for a typo in documentation. I submitted my second one today and it took more than a month to make that happen from the time I had the idea, including roughly a week of beating my head against the wall trying to sort out what I was doing wrong.
It seems like just doing some small pull request regularly so it becomes easy will take less time than relearning the process every few months. Given that I'm a writer by trade and I don't really program, finding typos in documentation (or similar) seems like the low-hanging-fruit option for me.
I don't know how to readily find places that need such help. I'm an outsider when it comes to the github ecosystem and all that.
I've tried to google it, etc. I'm not readily hitting pay dirt.
I'm hoping a few replies from people in the know will help me jump start this process, saving me weeks or months of spinning my wheels.
Thank you!
[1] My first post to HN nearly 12 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713015
The advantage of a project you use is that you probably know the jargon, and can distinguish what is jargon and what is a typo.
Note that error messages and comment in code have also many typos, so it's another source of small fixes.
If you want a random project, you can try Racket. The docs are in https://github.com/racket/racket/tree/master/pkgs/racket-doc There is a friendly guide for contributions in https://blog.racket-lang.org/2017/09/tutorial-contributing-t... but I'd wish it were more simple.
I prefer to use "TortoiseGit" in Windows and "Git Cola" in Linux instead of using the git commands directly. It's much more simple and works 99% of the time.
Remember that posting an issue with a report of the error is also helpful. And if you explain that you want to send it as a pull request, people may help.