From Novice to Contributor: My Experience with KWOC
A 5 Week Journey Learning OPEN SOURCE
About KWoC
Kharagpur Winter Of Code is a 5-week long program for the students of various colleges, especially for the students of IIT Kharagpur who are new to open source software development. Whether you're a beginner looking to get your feet wet in the world of open source or a seasoned developer looking to give back to the community, KWOC is a great way to get involved and make a difference.
Project Selection Phase
The project selection phase is an important part of the KWOC program, as it determines which open-source projects participants will be working on during the program. During this phase, participants have the opportunity to browse through a list of available projects and choose the ones that interest them the most.
As I browsed through the list of available projects during the project selection phase, I was struck by the sheer variety and quality of the options. From web development to data analysis, there seemed to be a project for every interest and skill level. However, a few projects, in particular, caught my eye :
DevEmpirev: A simple, yet elegant website providing resources on open-source events and fellowship programs.
Coffee Shop: A coffee cafe management project (being a coffee lover this was something I wanted to work on).
Criminal-Catch: A platform where you can upload videos of crime scenes and it will detect the face of the criminal from the faces saved in the database, giving the names of matches.
KWOC Coding Phase
The coding phase started on December 7th and I began by learning GitHub through hands-on practice on my own repository. Although I was new to coding and was not ready to make code contributions, I didn't let that hold me back. I searched for any and all ways I could get involved and contribute, even if it did involve writing code or helping with the documentation I contributed.
Contributions
The first contribution which I started with was in Devempire. I added several fellowships and programs which I knew of which can be seen here.
My mentor Swapnil helped me with the process and the Pull Request was successfully merged.
This project helped me a lot in the initial stages of my contribution. As I was contributing to these projects, I learned a lot about the workflow of git and they gave me a clear vision of how everything works in open-source contribution.
The second contribution I made was with the project Coffee Shop. The project was good and was in the initial phase but I saw some documentation improvements and added a real-world coffee cafe scenario. Improved Language Indentation in the project and removed some bugs which can be seen here.
The third contribution I made was to project Criminal-catch in which I added a code of conduct file and several necessary files for this project which can be seen here.
LINKS TO MY PR
Overall Experience
Overall, my experience with Kwoc was truly amazing. From start to finish, I was constantly learning and growing as a developer. The mentors were incredibly helpful and provided valuable guidance and support throughout the event.
One of the things that I appreciated the most about Kwoc was the sense of community and collaboration. It was great to be a part of a team of like-minded individuals who were all working towards a common goal. I feel that I have gained a lot from my participation in KWoC, both in terms of technical skills and personal growth.
I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to KOSS for organizing this event and for giving me the opportunity to be a part of it. KWoC has truly been an exciting and inspiring journey, and I hope to continue contributing to open source in the future.
About Vaibhav
Vaibhav is a sophomore at BPIT majoring in Electronics and Communication. He enjoys music and is always open to new experiences. Vaibhav is passionate about learning and improving his skills in programming and technology.