Most of the newcomers in programming start with basic projects to start with programming. Most of the C++ progammers spend some time with puzzles and contests but this is not always helpful. Sometimes you've to spend some time on real projects. Starting your own open source project could be a problem in self-learning for newbie cause of lack of mentors and peers who can't look at your code and give suggestions. Open source projects can solve this problem, some projects could be best suited for new programmers. Besides everybody is newbie at some point. So i'll try and make this question a bit from beginners perspective.

I tried few questions on stack overflow before asking this like How do i join & Bare minimum you need and how to get involved with open source and what level of programming etc. But this is not helping me when it comes to self-evaluating with skills. How to find that out ? How can i check what it takes to join open source project and am i really that comfortable with huge source code etc.

My question is when to consider yourself comfortable joining open source programming ? I mean how will you test yourself that you're ready to take burden of big/small projects of open source ? how will you test yourself to see if you could work with version control/other programmers/tight schedule etc ?