Exploring Open Source

It was time of September when I being a kid was exploring the Web technologies and some higher level languages while playing around basic programming questions. I got to see many posts on GSOC but by this time, I was pretty much aware about what GSOC is and how it works. I had read few articles on it and some videos about it. So, I came to know that, It has something to do with Open Source. I was luckily, a Linux learner back then, So the curtains of open source were unveiled to me. I had been through the history of great computer scientists and developers who brought the revolutions like Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Ken Thompson and others as well.

So, I just needed a kick start of contributions. But by this time, I had already used Git, GitHub for my own personal projects and in some small not so notable hackathons and events. So, I knew pretty well about the terms used in it like Fork, Clone etc. more than my peers because I had founded a failed community with almost 2 Regular members named as Nactore. So, At Nactore, I wrote the articles on Git and GitHub which hardly any of my fellow peers have read. It was tough for me to find an audience as I was not good at marketing my stuff. A bit of Shyness and my own set of principles, disallowed me to continue Nactore Forum (A shitty site hosted on Wix) and It just boom vanished.

I saw a video on FreeCodeCamp Guide to Open Source and learned how you should use GitHub more efficiently and find good issues for you. Then I started doing so. As said earlier in my Introduction, I was learning C++ in more detail so I started contributing the Fixes in DSA repository in Tenet Coding Organization. Soon, We came to October, Which is popularly known as HacktoberFest in the open source world. So, I asked out the ACM Club in my college to organize something for it. At the same time, I had frequent contributions in TENET. So, I was given an opportunity to mentor the HacktoberFest 2021 in Tenet. So, I did so, Merged PRs and Rejected PRs and also contributed to other projects by myself. Now, Hackoberfest was over and I got a T-Shirt for the same by getting my more than 4 PRs Merged.

To those who are entirely new, Google the term "Pull Request and Issues"

Now, I was participating to other Events like GirlScript Winter Of Contributing (GWOC), Winter Of Code 2.0 (By GDSC IIIT Kalyani). GWOC is all about documentation. I wrote some technical articles and got my PRs merged. This was the time, I was working on some large project (by quantity) where you might face merge conflicts, Issues closing and reopening, commit squashes etc. I anyway learned many things and standards of open source into this event. By this time, I started exploring the GSOC organizations and Previous Project " It all Comes by Exploration ".

If you never visited the GSOC site and explored Archives, Go do that.

In WoC 2.0 by Kalyani I saw LLVM out there which was based on compilers. Other orgs were not catching my interest as I was fed up with web development everywhere and wanted to try something more beautiful. I got a proposal for the same and sent it to mentor out there. It got accepted and then I told my mentor, I know nothing about compilers, What will I do ? He suggested to do some online study work. I got enrolled in a Course by Stanford in Coursera and learned about compilers. Now, I was being told to build the LLVM. But I had a boring Laptop of 4 GB RAM which was not sufficient. So, I skipped the program by informing mentor and kept things on hold. Meanwhile, I continued with my course and Learnt more around it. Fast forward to Late January 2022. I got myself a new laptop with 16 GB. and I build the software on my system by myself. Let's not get more in detail of my WoC 2.0 Journey which was really a breakthrough in my open source exploration. All thanks to Nimish Mishra Who helped me with the contribution process. If you want to know in detail about my LLVM journey Read this article of mine. LLVM Journey

I turned out to be a top contributor in both GWOC (Open Source Domain) and GDSC's WoC 2.0. By now, I was comfortable with the open source projects. Now, It was month of February and peak time for all GSOC aspiring candidates. Let's read about GSOC into next section.