[aussieguy1234]

Contribute to open source. Alot of projects have a "Good First Issue" tag. This will give you actual work you can show. I have known people who were hired on the basis of their GitHub contributions alone, where the employer said not to worry about sending in a Resume.

[frfl]

This is harder said than done, at least one some situations. The most ideal situation is where you are using a app, tool or a library, you find a bug or missing feature and you "scratch an itch" using your knowledge of the app, tool or library and software development.

Asking a novice to trawl the open internet or github looking for "good first issue" isn't a high probability road to success. Sure some may succeed, but likely most (I'm guessing here, I don't have actual numbers) will succumb to any number of barriers or deterrents that will end up giving them little or even negative benefit.

Here's a video, with a very unfortunate clickbaity title, that gives more info about the issues with suggesting "good first issue" type work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nY_cy8zcO4

[cute_boi]

I think people should contribute to code which they are little bit familiar. For example, if i am using some tools and it is not behaving as I expect, I can contribute on it. Otherwise, they will just waste maintainers time and resource with low quality PR.