GSSoC ’19 — My Experience
Open source always seems like a dangerous ground to tread. Especially without any previous knowledge or experience in it, I was hesitant about making my foray into this vast world full of strange terms like commits, fork, branches, and pull requests.
I made my first contribution to open source through Hacktoberfest, 2018. Maybe the prospect of winning prizes was enough motivation for me to finally start. And might I say, it was well worth it because by the end of the month, I realized that open source wasn’t as intimidating as it seemed.
Thus, when the opportunity of being able to contribute to open source for GirlScript Summer of Code, 2019, presented itself to me, I was curious and willing to give it a try.
The projects listed under GSSoC were all very interesting. We were given a few days to interact with Mentors and Organizers and other Participants over a Slack channel. In my opinion, it was a crucial time for me to understand and align my interests and abilities to a particular project before jumping right into making contributions.
I chose to contribute to a project, Algo DS Notes, a sort of mega compilation of all kinds of algorithms, from basic Data Structures to complex Machine Learning ones.
The most important takeaway for me was learning to take initiative, and not hesitating to ask. All the mentors were extremely helpful, always making sure my contributions were apt and being available to clear any difficulties that arose, not just within the scope of the project but also in case of queries regarding Open Source or other opportunities for tech enthusiasts.
The last three months have been interesting, to say the least. Not only was I able to make meaningful contributions and improve upon my programming skills but I was also able to connect with many other students and professionals from all over India.
It has been a great learning experience for me and I would definitely urge everyone to contribute to programs like these whenever the opportunity arises.
Start now.
Thank you.
About GSSoC —
