Hello world,

This is my first Blog and I wanted to share my experience as an Open Source Contibutor.

When we start contibuting to Open Source we feel a lot overwhelmed. There are millions of projects on GitHub and we have to choose one of them. Github becomes our major concern and everything around it a Mystery :D. We go through various repositries but unable to finalise in which to contribute and when we finally understand then it is always about HOW. GitHub is all about HOW. How to do this , How to do that, How to push a PR, How to Clone a repo, Blah! Blah! Blah! but being true once you know the answer of this HOW you know about most of the possiblities.

The best thing about GitHub is we get an unlimited amount of knowledge, explore anything and learn from each other. I started GitHub with my own Project. That was the experience which led me to never stop being a part of this. The easiness that it offer is priceless. Then, I moved to contributing into other projects and realised it’s real value. It is always more important to gain knowledge and contributing to projects gives us that. We get to learn about the aproaches that can be used, the ideas behind a project, structure which can be helpful, new technologies, new languages and a lot more, It gives you a wide and unlimited access to knowledge base.

The Challenge

GSoC is known by everyone, if you are an open Source Contributor than you know about GSoC. Everyone is hell crazy about that even I was too :D

I tried in GSOC for two consecutive years. The experience that we gain from GSOC is really priceless. If we keep on being pessimist like it won’t happen, I should not do this, blah! blah! blah! all these are myths believe me trying a little thing with a lot of hard work and keeping in mind that I will get to learn something new is the thing that is priceless. That little smile after accomplishing the task that you thought is impossible is what brings happiness and confidence to face those challenges more and more.

The very First time when I tried for GSoc I was completely unknown to it. I had contributed on Github but the hype of GSoC is what sometimes makes you a little extra nervous. I didn’t submit my proposal as there was nothing I was aiming for and being true I wasn’t prepared. I just kept on exploring the repositories in which I can contribute and the time just got over. That’s how my first attempt ended. That was kind of foolish but yaa that prepared me for another year of attempt at GSoC.

In my Second attempt I was prepared beforehand. I had gone through repositories, I had selected my project in which I have to contribute, that was Nuitka. It was a special project for me. I liked it, it aligned with my skills and found it comfortable to work on. I worked on it, made contribution, its just due to some miss communication everything fall to the wrong side. I know my second attempt ended at wrong page but the knowledge I gained with this experience is really exceptional. I got to learn a new language, jinja, learned a lot from my mentor, he is really good and an awesome mentor.

Failure always stinks but we should never forget the experience we gain from it and trust me there are many potholes :D, so better we learn to jump :)!

Open Source always welcomes you with wide open repos :D. We always have some Good and some bad experiences. Sometimes you want to contribute to a repo but unable to understand it’s structure, or the way it is working, you like the idea but it didn’t align with your skills at all but that is the challenge and that is where you can widen your knowledge and learn about more stuff. So, Keep Learning and most importantly Be Happy :)