On starting OSS contribution 👾
I just want to build.
The year is 2024, the month is June, and the day is the 20th! I don't know about you, but that to me screams: time is moving unimaginably fast.
Anywho, why are we here?
We are gathered here to celebrate the size of this win.
Let's do some debriefing: What is OSS? OSS stands for open source software. Simply put, "Open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance." You can read more here.
Somewhere in 2020, during COVID, I heard about open source for the very first time from Samuel. My mind wandered; it didn't make sense. I did not even fathom the concept or why something like that even exists. Regardless, I kept it in my memory.
At the beginning of the year, I had one vision: to build and get my hands dirty, you know? So I set on that course. I have been getting my hands dirty, obviously. Solely for work purposes, which I won't be getting into today.
I had no plan of contributing to OSS this year, but I randomly found myself tinkering on GitHub, and then boom, I found out that someone I had been following since 2020 had actually open-sourced an amazing project he was hacking on, which piqued my interest. I went through the repo, and tell me why the whole idea had me smiling brazenly. You know that feeling where things you have read over time click on a random day? Like an aha moment. Yeah, that was me when I found Fusion. Everything I read in 2020 came to life; it finally made sense. Now I could see the bigger picture. Right behind my desk, behind my screens, your girl was like, "Aha!" The pure joy oozing was simply unmatched. Cyborg girl in her full glory 🤖. In hindsight, I am grateful to have discovered OSS in 2020.
The icing on the cake was that Fusion was not just available for me to hack on, but it's centered on neurotech. I was excited🤰🏿.
Outside of work, a few of my friends advised me to specialize, so this year my focus was mainly frontend. Previously, I dabbled a bit in design and backend, but not this year.
"If only you can do a single thing, hone it to perfection."
PS: If you get the reference, I respect you WEEB!
PPS: If you don't, log off!
Lucky for me, he had a web client that is built with TypeScript and React. Man, you can't understand how much that made me jitter. I quickly joined the community on Discord, installed the fusion app, and also tried out the web client. Good stuff! It's impressive to know that Ore singlehandedly bootstrapped Fusion since its dawn.
TL;DR:
If you are wondering, the project I decided to hack on is Fusion.
Proceeds to talk about Fusion: "Fusion brings together data on sleep, health vitals, screen time, and behavior to provide insights into how they impact your lifestyle."
Upon trying out the products, I was totally stoked! So the following week, I quickly picked a good first issue, forked the repo, and started going through the codebase. Yeah, if you know open source, you've probably heard the chat about how huge and daunting the codebase could be. Fusion was okay; mainly because it’s in the very early stages of development. At least, I could confidently read the LOC and get a hang of what was happening.
Ore has a very great community. I have never been in any open-source community, but looking at how he put together the Discord, the community felt like home. At Fusion, we have monthly community calls to chat about progress and get contributors up to speed with the dev work. So I had my first call with the team, and boy, a time was had. He demystified the whole Fusion concept and helped me set up. I was making progress 🦦.
After that Saturday call, I was still blocked by a nasty CORS error, which we later resolved somewhere in the week. And by we, I mean Ore and I.
Alas! I was fully set up now, ready to hack.
The issue was a simple one: onboard new users to Fusion on the web.
I thought about the process for like two minutes, mapped it on paper, and started coding. In like two hours, I was done. I sent my screenshots over to Ore, and this was his exact statement, bar for bar:
"This is perfect!"
I felt good.
I made my PR and went about my day.
The next day, in the evening, my PR got merged! That was very quick. 2020 me will be shaking right now. The dopamine was also very surreal. And that my friends, is how I contributed to my very first open source.
Some takeaways:
- Just do it.
- Your life can change in minutes; the internet is a very vast place, and trust me, people are watching.
- Know your why and go hard on it.
- Did I mention just do it?
- Yea, just do it.
Don't forget to check out Fusion.
I will leave you with this quote:
"I can't complain I have too much on my plate when the plan was to eat." -- Unknown
Until next time. We out 🧃!