I know this is pretty late. But I wanted to write about how I first started with open source and application development. I would be happy if it helps someone beginning with their open source journey. It was around mid February in 2020 when I was looking around to learn something new in application/software development. I wanted to try something I was interested in and particularly not frightening as till then I haven't worked on any serious development projects. That's when I came across GirlScript Summer of Code on LinkedIn. It is a 3 - month long open source program that encourages students to begin with open source. I thought it would be the apt one for me. So, I registered immediately and was waiting for it to begin.

The wait was finally over!

At the end of February I guess, I received a mail saying I was selected for the program and can get started. I went through their website and found many interesting projects. But since I was a beginner, I was scared of various skills involved in the projects. So, I started with something simple, mainly something I knew. I didn't worry about Git much because I learnt the basics required to successfully make a pull request when I worked on a project and participated in Hacktoberfest. So, I didn't bother to learn Git much. Just before I started in GSSoC, I was working on a frontend project where I used Adobe XD for some simple designs. So, I thought I could begin with that.

My first pull request in GSSoC

So, yeah, that was my first pull request as part of GSSoC. I designed a wireframe for a books web app using Adobe XD. I made a PR following the conventions and made changes as instructed by the mentor. My first pull request got merged!! Then, I wanted to do some coding for my next contributions as I was not interested in designing much.

My favorite - Flutter

I wanted to try mobile development since a long time. And I heard about Flutter - that being able to make both android and iOS apps using a single code. So, I found it pretty interesting. That's when I started learning Flutter to contribute to projects.

The demon of the year - COVID 19

Just when I began learning Flutter, things really changed as I had to rush home from college due to COVID - 19 emergency. Amidst the chaos happened due to COVID, I had lost many days when I couldn't contribute to projects without realization. When I settled at home, I finally started contributing to AlgoDsNotes. This is a collection of various algorithms and data structures. Since, I was still learning Flutter, I thought this would be a nice way to strengthen my Dart skills. So, I started contributing to AlgoDsNotes by solving issues on DSA in Dart. I initially started with easy issues and then kept on going by solving medium and hard issues as well. I was the top contributor to this project by the end of GSSoC'20. While contributing to this project, I also took a course on Flutter offered by GirlScript Foundation as part of programs for COVID. This course helped me a lot and I started grabbing issues on Flutter right after I finished the course in a week. I started with the project, travel-safe which is a women safety mobile application. I started with a medium issue of making sign up - login screens for the app. I faced many errors and problems. The mentors of the project were quite helpful along the way. I resolved a good number of issues mostly related UI in this project. Then, I moved on to resolving issues with Firestore backend.

Contributions continued

As I was mostly contributing to only two projects, I wanted to explore other projects as well to see if I can resolve any issues. Since I started looking into other projects very late, almost all good first or easy issues were resolved. Barely a few were left. I resolved those few of them. I went through medium issues in other repositories whether I could work on any and was able to complete a few. Then, I returned back to Algo-Ds-Notes and travel - safe and continued contributing till the midnight of 31st May 2020. That was the end of GSSoC'20.

After a few days, the results were announced. I stood at 18th place in the leaderboard. It wasn't bad of course! 😃

Take away

The mistake I did while participating in GSSoC was not starting early. A few points that can help beginners to make the best use of their time as part of GSSoC are

1. Start early
2. Be consistent
3. Interact with mentors and your co - participants

And of course keep solving as many issues as you can!