Outreachy Chapter 4: Landing into the comfort zone
Today a look at the calendar sent me into a state of disbelief — how can half of my internship be already over? It still seems as if it was yesterday when I saw my name on the selection list.
Yes, you got it right! I’ve enjoyed this period so much that I can’t digest the fact that it’ll come to an end in just one and a half months. Ah, but reality always hits hard.
Jumping to what progress I’ve made in the past 2 weeks — I’ve started with the coding phase. Finally, I’ve landed into my comfort zone.
I’m working on my first module which is writing the backend for the user-summary section of my design mockup. This includes information like — since when user is contributing to Wikipedia, which all user groups he/she is in, in how many articles is he/she a major contributor etc etc.
I was able to calculate most of the metrics quite easily except one — number of articles in which user is a major contributor. This metric really brought me to my knees! Why? Because every approach I went for was either too slow or didn’t solve my use-case perfectly.
I was really amazed at my capability to think of one approach after another and code each one of them from scratch just to know how well it performs. So, this exercise made me realize —
A roadblock only makes you push your limits and discover a better you.
So currently, each passing day is a challenge which makes me struggle, learn and evolve!
Coming to the last part — key learnings in the past 2 weeks:
- Learnt how to setup a Continuous Integration pipeline. Since my project is hosted on Github, I’m using Travis for CI.
- Learnt how OAuth works and how to integrate it with the project.
- Lastly, don’t give up! Exhaust every possible alternative. You might not get it right every single time but you’ll at least get the contentment of trying till the end.
Like all others, these 2 weeks have been amazing and exciting! And yes, I’m looking forward to more challenges. Otherwise how would I get the content for an engaging post, right? *wink*