Posts tagged struggles

Everyone Struggles, But Everyone Believes They Are The Only One Struggling

While I have had a very curious interest in FOSS since almost the beginning of my time at university, and tried to follow it up by looking at projects that intrigued me, I was never able to contribute to anything largely due to my inability to ask (read: fear of asking) questions like what a beginner like me could do. I often did not know how to structure my thoughts and questions in a way that the maintainers understood - beyond the initial “hey! I am a beginner in xyz and would love to work on this project” - because what I probably wished for is someone to assign me a task and list out all the prerequisites I’d need to fulfill it.

Since anyone reading this will know that that is not how open source exactly works - not that maintainers don’t help you out, quite the opposite, but delegating unresolved issues to newcomers like a teacher would do to their students is not how it goes. Any contributor needs to be more proactive in claiming issues, recognizing bugs, and approaching the project as a whole. Now what should people who really do want to be proactive in such a manner but actually feel lost and clueless do? I was one of them, and I can say that I continue to be like that. When I began my journey with Outreachy through the contribution period, after making sure that I had some interest in the PyMC project, I claimed issues without thinking much at all. I was encouraged by my mentor to scan through the many many open issues and chose the ones that seemed the simplest, and haven’t stopped learning and working since.

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