{
  "id": 4961661,
  "title": "The bug nobody fixed for 4 years (and how it got me my first Contributor badge)",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/01/the-bug-nobody-fixed-for-4-years-and-how-it-got-me-my-first",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-01T22:35:52.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/igorgbr/the-bug-nobody-fixed-for-4-years-and-how-it-got-me-my-first-contributor-badge-4b8f"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Contributing to open source projects can be daunting for beginners. When I first opened the issues tab of an open source project, I hesitated to contribute, fearing my skills were insufficient. Over time, I found a simple time converter called TimeConv to fix a mobile-responsive issue. Despite four people diagnosing the problem, no one opened a pull request. The original CSS code positioned the footer absolutely at the bottom, which worked well until the page content scrolled, causing the footer to float in the middle of the text. I replaced the CSS with a modern flexbox solution, but discovered the issue was not solely CSS-based. The HTML structure of the affected files made the fix more complex, requiring changes to both HTML and CSS. After fixing the issue, I submitted a PR with 7 files containing 175 lines added and 174 lines removed. Initially, the CI pipeline failed due to linting issues, but I demonstrated that the original files also failed the linter, which helped unblock the merge. This experience taught me the importance of thoroughly testing changes in a static site environment. After merging my PR, I continued to explore the project and discovered two additional bugs. The lessons learned from this first contribution motivated me to continue contributing to open source projects, starting with small projects and gradually moving to larger ones.",
  "summary": "Have you ever opened the issues tab of an open source project, stared at the list, and closed it? I have. More than once. The feeling is always the same: \"this is for grown-ups, I'm not good enough to touch it\". So you close the tab, go back to your side project, and contributing becomes something you'll do when you're \"ready\". Spoiler: you'll never be ready. I started by fixing a footer that…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}