After Mission "GCI" with FOSSASIA

Written on: January 12, 2017

During the last one and a half month of GCI participation, I think I have spent more time on this than the amount of time I ever spent for my studies. Although unlike my studies I enjoyed it a lot while learning and building various skills.

Before this participation, I was a total beginner with only basic programming knowledge and that is it. I did not know much about git, deploying, unittest, terminal commands, etc. If you have seen my post for the first task in GCI, it was about my use of git and github, but now that I have learnt lot more about git, e.g. squashing, rebasing, branching, I realized how I was totally clueless about git before GCI. Besides git, I have learnt so much about open source and the process of contributing to a project as I was working with FOSSASIA. Over the tasks of solving issues helped me learn and improve my skills of coding.

At the end when I started taking coala tasks, I found it more intriguing, since those tasks were quite challenging for me, at the same time it wasn’t something completely impossible. Surely during solving the tasks, facing issues was really annoying, but the satisfaction recieved from overcoming it was enourmous. Besides coala task I enjoyed doing the poster tasks that I have done, since it was my first time making a poster, and designing it, was fun. Afterwards when I went to school to put up the poster, it was satisfying to see people admiring it. However comparing with standard posters, it might be at the bottom of the list.

Well this whole participation was only possible and enjoyable thanks to the amazing mentors in FOSSASIA. I think I was quite annoying to them, since for every micro to big problems I faced, I was asking for help to them. I know I am very bad at reading the docs and manuals and this leaves me with lots of questions, I hope to get better with it soon as I keep my participation with FOSSASIA and its projects. I think participating into these projects and solving bugs is the best way to learn, so I have no plans on stopping ^_^ . Since I am primarily interested in android and python, I plan on mostly taking part in the android projects and coala projects (also interested in the open-event-orga server, but couldn’t take task of it during GCI, but plan on trying it out soon). I also hope to learn lot more and be able to do proper contributions to all types of project.

I thank FOSSASIA and all the mentors for being part of GCI and helping me learn so much. I want to especially thank Hemant Jadon, John Vandenberg, and Nicco Kunzmann since they were the ones who mostly beared my stupid questions while helping me do the tasks. I really dont know what improvement suggestion to give, they reviewed and helped me overcome issues in time, answerd all my questions with easy to understand explanation, what else do we need?

Another awesome thing that I enjoyed about this participation was being in the community. Before GCI, when I just started learning programming I always wanted to know more people who share the same interest, and now I do, not only mentors but the sutdents. I have met so many students who are absolutely amazing, its hard to believe we are of similar age.

Now this is a recommendation for my friends and others who is hearing GCI for the first time - if you are 13 to 17 years old, even if you have 0 computer knowledge, I strongly recommend you to take part next year, dont miss the opportunites to learn new skills. I regret not knowing about GCI earlier, if I knew I wouldn’t have missed a single one.

Once again, I want to thank GCI and FOSSASIA to give me this amazing opportunity to learn and be a part of the amazing community. Thank you.