GitHub is a well-known platform used by a significant portion of people working and studying technology, regardless of programming language or level of experience. One of the features of this platform is the contribution graph, which visually shows how much a person uses GitHub through commits, PRs, and other actions.

If you are active in the online developer community, then you know that now and then this question arises: "What is stopping you from having your GitHub all green with contributions?"
But does that really matter? Let's talk about it!

But first, what does it mean to have a green GitHub?

When we talk about a green GitHub, we're referring to this feature here, the contribution graph:

And by making it green, I don't mean making every square dark green. The image above is my contribution graph. I have quite a few gray squares, and that's okay.
What matters is having balance.

Is having a "green" GitHub important?

The answer is it depends...
Having a green contribution graph shows the community, recruiters, and curious individuals looking at your profile that you are always working on some project and uploading your work on GitHub. This is always good for people looking for a job or new opportunities, as well as for those starting in the field.

However, saying that this is necessary or an obligation for programmers is an exaggeration because despite being very popular, not everyone uses GitHub, and many people don't have time to create projects to enhance their GitHub accounts as well as keep a healthy life.
I am one of those people tbh.

How do I make my GitHub greener?

We've concluded that while it's not necessary, it's also not a bad thing, right?
So I'll share some tips here on how I make my graph greener.

Everything I study goes on GitHub.

It can be just a "Hello World" in a new language or a repository with summaries of my studies, but whenever I'm learning something, I put it in a repository on GitHub.

GitHub is not just for code.

As I mentioned above, I use repositories on GitHub to store summaries of what I'm learning, and this is a great example of using GitHub for more than just storing code.

I also use GitHub as a portfolio for my talks to make it easier for me when I have to submit C4P.
Other common non-code uses are low-code projects, documentation, and archiving content.

Help your friends with their projects

When learning to code, I made friends with other people learning too, and often we would share our latest web apps for review, and our friends would make some small changes to our repos, to learn better the workflow of contributing to a project.
Why not start this habit in your communities?

In conclusion...

Using your GitHub account regularly and adding some green squares to your graph might not be necessary for your programming career, but it certainly has its benefits. I hope that with this article, you've gained some ideas on how to contribute more and the inspiration to do so.

Xoxo