Getting started

[Alan Frank]

Developers,

I'm new here and, following the guidelines, would like to start with an 
"Easy Hack," preferably in Javascript, Python, or SQL, but I could 
probably remember Java if necessary.  Alas, I'm having trouble finding 
an appropriate "Easy Hack."  I don't mind if it's not so easy, as I am a 
fairly experienced developer, but I'd rather not spend a huge amount of 
time on something of little interest.  Any suggestions?

Some details on what I saw and what I actually want to do...

I took a look at the SQL and Python easy lists.  One of the SQL ones in 
particular struck me as strange.  32506 Find/Replace was originally 
reported ten years ago.  It doesn't appear to be easy, and if nobody has 
addressed it in a decade, one wonders if it is still worth doing.

There are apparently some bugs in Writer with vertically merged table 
cells.  The most easily repeatable is that pressing <down-arrow> on the 
first line does not move the insertion point.  One needs to go to the 
end of the line and press <right-arrow>.  There are also display issues; 
I have seen differing behaviors such as not scrolling to follow the 
insertion point as I type (what I'm seeing now) and also (which I can't 
currently reproduce) showing only the second line when there is room for 
both.  It seems hard to believe that this has not been reported; should 
I do that?  Is this an appropriate thing for me to fix?

Once I get my feet wet, I'd also like to make some improvements to 
conditional formatting in Calc to provide at least comparable 
functionality to what Excel has.

Finally, while I have a lot of experience designing and writing code, 
this is my first foray into open source (other than posting my own stuff 
on Github).  While I appreciate that there are extensive instructions 
online, if someone wants to volunteer to help guide me through getting 
started, that would be awesome.

--Alan