Great article. As a developer I have very similar feelings, I imagine there are more like me. Often the perceived barriers are very similar to the ones mentioned here (not feeling smart enough, not knowing where to start, etc.)
One nice project that came up on HN recently, but people may have missed, is codetriage (http://http://www.codetriage.com/) which I have signed up for, but have yet to take any action on. It provides a gentle run-way into contributing to projects on github, by emailing you issues from projects you have expressed an interest in helping out with. Even if you are not so confident in your coding skills, there is still plenty of helpful work to be done here. From the emails codetriage sends out:
Goals of Triage
Help share the weight of maintaining a project
Minimize un-needed issues
Prevent stale issues
Encourage productive communication
Teach good citizenship
To become a better coder
How To Triage?
First, carefully read over the issue, title, and description, if there are any comments read over all the comments, carefully. If a member of this repo is engaging actively there is no need to do anything, leaving a comment in the issue would just add to the clutter.
If the issue hasn't been updated in awhile, or if no one has commented consider the issue, if it is a bug try to reproduce it. If it is a pull request consider what an alternate implementation might look like. If there is something you don't understand about the issue and feel others will have that same question please leave your question in the comments. Be as descriptive as possible. Comments like "I don't understand this" are not helpful and counter productive. A better comment might be "Can you help me understand a use case for this?".
If you can reproduce the issue or you believe it is a good pull request, add a comment and say why you think that is. Try to stay positive while triaging issues, ask questions before you :-1: something. If you do decide to :+1: or :-1: on an issue, leave a comment as to why you feel that way. Issues are for social coding, if you help someone make better issues, you're helping the community.
If the issue goes stale, leave a comment asking if it is still a problem. If you get no response for a number of days, you can leave another comment suggesting to the repo owner that they should close the issue.
Go forth and make the world a better place
My point is - I love the idea about contributing with design, but don't write off helping with code issues either! You may surprise yourself! Also worth bearing in mind other areas that may be lacking people-power - for example if you are multi-lingual, translations are another great way to contribute....
One nice project that came up on HN recently, but people may have missed, is codetriage (http://http://www.codetriage.com/) which I have signed up for, but have yet to take any action on. It provides a gentle run-way into contributing to projects on github, by emailing you issues from projects you have expressed an interest in helping out with. Even if you are not so confident in your coding skills, there is still plenty of helpful work to be done here. From the emails codetriage sends out:
My point is - I love the idea about contributing with design, but don't write off helping with code issues either! You may surprise yourself! Also worth bearing in mind other areas that may be lacking people-power - for example if you are multi-lingual, translations are another great way to contribute....