We are reaching the main pain points here: Apache projects are first communities and then technological solutions, so we should facilitate how new people get into the project.
And what a best way to enter a software project than start coding? (ok, maybe this opinion is biased, I am a software engineer after all:))
Currently, there is a “newdev” label in the Apache Solr Jira, but how many people know that? (for example, I didn’t).
Yes, it is explained here(https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/solr/howtocontribute), but I couldn’t find any reference on the Apache Solr reference guide (please allow me this word pun).
Potentially we need more, maybe different tiers of issues(new-dev-tier1, new-dev-tier2…)? With an increasing order of difficulty? So depending on the amount of time a new contributor wants/can dedicate can choose.
And we definitely should update the reference guide with that and evangelize that more at conferences and meetups.