Thread by @osdotsystem

I don't have any more checkboxes to tick in tech:

Conferences, prestigious authoring, money, satisfaction, meaningful impact, helping, community, impressive friends, influence, cool places, awesome stuffs.

How #OpenSource 100% helped me: A Thread!

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1⃣ I learned to program while still at school <18. I was already coding cool stuff for a long time. My main thing was an IRC bot and @eldergodselven , @loganaden_42 , @YashPaupiah were providing amazing inputs. They were a very cool audience. But I did not care about Github!

2⃣ One day @loganaden_42 told me to start using Github. I did not agree. @github was not a requirement for good codes. I also told him I found the interface overwhelming. He asked me to try nevertheless.

3⃣ Somehow, I got started by uploading projects of mine, and just to get used to the mechanics of Github. And of course, for someone new, I kind of thought Git was GitHub and vice versa. Uploading my own projects made me more of a maintainer someone than a contributor. Till now.

4⃣ Being exposed to the wilderness of Github, I correlated project success to good code quality. I picked up good repo elements, great coding standards and patterns, tools & CI etc from popular projects. It short-circuited my way to solid practices, unmatched even in enterprises

5⃣ Being a mercenary / freelancer, at the beginning even if I had fewer years of experience, I had nevertheless a very good exposure to industry practices. It also honed my ability to dive into big, unknown codebases and nurtured my passion for reading code, as one reads books

6⃣ In the process I gifted myself the passion for research. When building things for people to use, you sometimes brush with the unknown. You learn, a lot! I also saw that unless your project had good tests, industry scouts would never give you the green light!

7⃣ Since I started #OpenSource the hard way, being a maintainer allowed me to help others get their feet wet! Many good coders, now engineers at FAANG & Co, did not know about contributing. I could not believe I could make an impact.

8⃣ Github green squares partly motivated me to keep coding. This improved me a lot. Getting used to building in the open builds confidence which enabled me to tackle paid projects. I contributed back my template to deliver fast: @shopyoproject

9⃣ @shopyoproject being an oxymoron in spirit and an oddity by design opened the doors for many conferences. I am taking a leave for conference speaking this year as I got a full dose last year.

1⃣0⃣ Building a community around my projects put me into the shoes of a senior. Explaining, documenting, reviewing, referring, I got a full shot of glue experience the proper way with people willing to be taught. This furthered my contractor work ethic.

1⃣1⃣ At some point you realize you have some awesome projects around. I had a bot with awesome plugins, advanced e-commerce solutions, thousands of pypi downloads, you have more potential than you can exploit.

1⃣2⃣ The most significant perk is ... meeting the best of people in the field. Maintainers of popular projects are very cool people. Consistent contribution allows you to cross the path of experts, and they are willing to help you in your growth. For free.

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