I’ve definitely gotten braver about wanting to contribute to open source projects, which is something I’m quite happy about.

How My View Has Changed

I used to think that it (any open source project) was always going to be too fast-paced an environment to be able to help in any significant way. Also, prior to this class, I also felt as if non-code contributions are somehow lesser in a way. I’m very glad that’s changed. Especially since almost all of our contributions to Lemmy have been non-code contributions.

Rather, it’s more of just finding ways to improve a tool or software that you find cool, that you have integrated as part of your workflow, or something that you hold dear.

I’ve also begun to use the Github social media aspect a bit more to find cool lists or projects other people are starring. For example, I found pier-cli because someone I was following starred it. This was kind of a serendipitious find too because lately I’ve been very frustrated about how I always forget these super long one liner commands and then I have to either scroll up in my cli history or look through my browser history for where I found it. Basically pier-cli allows you to alias scripts or one-liners so that you don’t have to have them written in a text file or in your bin folder somewhere.

Rust

Working on Lemmy has really given me an itch to learn Rust. I love C++ for all the nitty-gritty and minute details you have to worry about (at least when compared to Python) and I’ve often seen Rust put in the same tier as it. It also seems to be taking off as a language and could look nice when showing off to future employers. A place I had previously interviewed for worked primarily in Rust, maybe they’d have hired me if I knew it then.

I also really want to dedicate sometime to get involved in the PineTime community, but my lack of OS knowledge and fear of learning Rust has held me back. Well, I gained a little bit of OS knowledge and the plan is to play with Rust over summer, so maybe next year I’ll be able to help out. Plus (did I mention), I’m more confident about working on open-source projects now!

Fin

Nothing profound. I think I’ve just now got a real longing for working on OSS for a living. How cool would it be to baby a project with your coworkers and then show it to the world and have them learn/teach about it and build that onion that we learned about early in the semester?

Said onion: