Forem: omicreativedev

What I Learned From Hacktoberfest 2023

omicreativedev — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 00:59:59 +0000

This is not my first Hacktoberfest rodeo, but last year was. As far as 'open source' as a culture, I'm still very new. I actually don't have lots of experience with Git either. Although I've developed dozens of websites over the years, made chrome plugins, Wordpress and Shopify plugins, and a few bots- it wasn't until I went back to school to finally get my Computer Science degree that I realized how insignificant what I could do really was. You see, it always earned me a living and I didn't do much else, so I didn't know how (er... stupid) I was really until I started actually trying to become a 'real' developer.

I tried my hand at Hacktoberfest last year but I got only 3 out of 4 merges complete. I had no idea what I was doing so I was really proud of what I did do. This year my goal was to complete Hacktoberfest, but mostly to REALLY learn Git and Github.

Highs and Lows

I decided to make a repository with a theme switcher. I thought I was doing it right modeling after others but I found out later it got excluded because it was too simple. It broke some of the community standards but I think it was more in my approach. I didn't know that it was a red flag to use hacktoberfest in my repo name. And I got really caught up with the celebration, inviting dozens of people (some who don't even code) to learn about open source by practicing in my repository. Even though it was excluded, I'm still really happy that we made something that's now a free resource (even though it's simple and anyone could do it.) It was really tough for the non-coders at my school to try something they never did before. And it was exciting for me to learn about running a repo that other people contributed to. As for my own contributions, I decided to engage with a partner to Hacktoberfest: Illacloud. I worked on contributing AI agents to their community, and I signed up for their platform for a real subscription to learn about low-code App development. I also participated in Global Hack Week.

Growth

This year I learned a lot more about Git and Github, mainly from the maintainer side. My repo was rejected, but I still gained valuable skills learning the other side of the fence. I also learned a lot about how to INQUIRE about how to help with a project that wasn't my own. And about the flow of how to contribute, wait, go back and forth, and finally submit something worth merging.

Through this experience I'll be better prepared and experienced for next year. Persistence and optimistic mindset will take me ahead. I think I almost know enough Java (through school) now to make a program to REALLY start an open source project (not for Hacktoberfest) or contribute to others without breaking them or wasting anyone's time, so I'm excited about that.

Let's Play *Why Is My Repo EXCLUDED?

omicreativedev — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 05:10:44 +0000

I was so excited about Hacktoberfest this year because last year I was one PR away from completing and it ruined my streak. This year I decided to not only participate as a coder but to host a repository.

Let me preface this by saying, I'm NOT a great coder. I'm an undergraduate Computer Science student who is mostly self-taught. I work at the college I go to part time as a Digital Student Liaison. So I help students and teachers with things among which are creating their own online portfolio. We use something similar to Jeckyll. In that, while I teach them, they also come to learn some HTML/CSS/JS — You know, to make their webpage look cool. These folks don't need to learn MERN or Wordpress. They need to learn to my H1, H2, H3.

On a tangent- I know... So last year, my team and I won the hackathon at school. I was the person who coded the site and we deployed a simple social network for the school. As a result, I'm volunteering for the board to help organize this year's hackathon.

I promise, this all ties together. Before this event, we usually do peer organized little mini-hackathons and I teach folks through things like hour of code and freecodecamp.

So I would excited to host a repository this year and I got dozens of people to sign up for hacktoberfest! YAY!

My repository has even gotten 19 stars! WOO!

So I opened this repository up for hacktoberfest and many strangers came, and many friends and fellow students. It's been great. A big mess really, as I've had to git revert --no-commit twice already lol.

I'm still learning too. Big time.

What I didn't expect was someone coming back to me saying their PR was excluded. Upon investigation, I've confirmed at least 2. I'm not sure if it's just the PR or the whole repo. I've gotten no communication about this. No flags. No way to know but the hard way. Wow. Imagine all the people who are excluded who don't know and how many people are participating in good faith highly motivated by the hacktoberfest only to be dropped the bomb that they are rejected, excluded, and invalidated.

I for one feel highly embarrassed and humiliated for hyping this up to over 50 people and signing people up and being a whole cheerleader, only look like a fool who wasted everyone's time.

For new people- this is their first impression.

I realize hacktoberfest has a spam problem.
I realize it also has a problem with vulture repos.
What is hilarious is, the prizes are 100% digital anyway.
And they're coupon codes we get when we sign up anyway.
In reality, these badges lend nothing to our resume.
Nobody says, "They completed hacktoberfest- let's hire her."
Promotional.
And that's fine. I want them digital rewards too. Hey!
But, the move to flag first ask questions never— is highly discriminatory against basic web developers and small repos.

Back to my story... So, I wanted to teach people about opensource and I still will (this is not open source's fault) via this event and I thought it would be great. I was teaching people basic code, right in the real life using real Git. Hands on.

So I emailed hacktoberfest-at-digitalocean.com and got the "ticket number" automated response...

We will see how it goes.

Sincerely, disheartened.

Here is my repo https://github.com/omicreativedev/ThemeSwitcher

I know it's simple but it was fun.

I'm bored of reading copy writing...

omicreativedev — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 02:59:33 +0000

I'm bored of reading copy on everyone's blog.

10 Steps to bla bla bla
Happy in 30 seconds or less
Generated Headline, authoritative body... ACTION ITEM

Writing doesn't feel personal anymore. Even when I read people writing their personal story, it reads like:

I grew up like sh*t.
I didn't let it stop me.
I won.

It's manufactured. It's fake. Even when it's true, it's not real.

Writing should be proactive.
It should evoke feelings and paint a picture.
It should arouse sensation.

Even technical blogging (at least for the web) should have some personality.

I love Wikipedia. But why is half of Medium written like it?

It would be great to go back to a time when everyone didn't have a masterclass in blogging and copy. I want to read walls of text, carefully drizzled with emphasis and character. I want perfect imperfection.

That kind of writing is probably great for those who just want to get to the point. Scroll to the header they need, scan first and last sentences— but then why write at all.

I guess it works and I'm the minority of people who wants to relate to you and what you're saying in a meaningful way.

Where are YOU in your writing?

I need issues for my Repo 😐

omicreativedev — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 07:14:37 +0000

So I decided to host a repository for Hacktoberfest. I've been spending more time than I thought I would inventing and creating problems to have issues to delegate to participants.

My goal was to be able to learn how to maintain a repository by just diving right in! I'm happy to share that I had done my first merge and now have a contributors work merged into my repo. (YAY!)

This repository is mostly practice for beginners who are learning basic HTML/CSS/JS such as my friends who are taking the freecodecamp lessons. I've attracted over a dozen participants and that's really promising! I love that.

However, it seems, that rather than people just forking and participating, they are going with the prompts in issues. That's fine. I'm sure everyone just wants to make sure that they have permission and will be properly credited.

As such though, I'm running out of ideas and spending a little more time than I thought just making up things to do in the repository so that newbies can practice.

I would like to invite anyone reading to check out the repo and if you can think of any bugs, enhancements, ideas or anything else- to raise an issue that others can work on.

It would be a big help.

Here is the repo.

https://github.com/omicreativedev/hacktoberfest2023

So far being a maintainer is very interesting and I already have learned a lot. :)

My First Repo as a Maintainer for #Hacktoberfest 🥳

omicreativedev — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 15:42:00 +0000

I made my FIRST maintainer repo 🥳 here so I can learn how to maintain a repo for #Hacktoberfest and the future.

The project is a simple free website template I made with a theme switcher. It's very basic and meant to help my friends who never coded before have a place to practice where everything is intuitive after taking a small course like freecodecamp. There are no code, low code, documentation, and gfx/ux opportunities.

Mentors and contributors welcome! Teach me the way!!!

I'm also hoping to gain 200 stars so syndication sites pick up my repository.⭐

Please consider this an opportunity to teach me along the way.

I will be posting about what I learned maintaining my first Hacktoberfest repo.

Hacktoberfest10 Pledge

omicreativedev — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 02:10:58 +0000

Hello Dev World!

My name is Omi. I'm a returning adult student studying Computer Science and Data Engineering in Massachusetts. I was a musician for many years while side hustling in the Finance Sector (full time job lol) while doing self-taught freelance front end, web, and wordpress dev from home. I have 3 kids. I decided a year ago to pull the trigger and go back to school because that philosophy major from my youth hasn't pulled in the big bucks yet and I never became a famous pop star ;)

Hacktoberfest

I participated in Hacktoberfest 2022 but was one merge shy of completing! UGHHHH! Despite the fact that I'm in school, honestly, I'm still in the "wtf am I doing" phase. Does that ever leave? #impostersyndrom

Pledge

My goals for this Hacktoberfest are:

Complete Hacktoberfest
Try to make some low-code and no-code contributions
Actually start 100-days-of-code #adhd
Find a mentor or 3
See if I can add something to DEV

Please follow me if you want to be friends. <3 ^_^ #girlcode

hacktoberfest23

Masscode is closing its doors...

omicreativedev — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 20:30:12 +0000

As of 2022, Masscode will no longer be updating its popular code snippet software. I gather its lack of popularity must be because Github gist is free and integrated into github. I really like this tool however because it makes saving snippets from VSCode very simplistic— just highlight and create snippet. It's likely I don't know what alternatives there are, but I'm currently using only freeware so maybe the Pro devs use a commercial program (or none at all?) Either way, sort of sad to see it go and wondering if I should just switch to using gists.

Do you use a code snippet organizer?

If so, which one?

What is in your tech/dev stack?

omicreativedev — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 03:16:34 +0000

What is in your tech/dev stack?

Bonus Question: What languages, libraries, and tools do you feel everyone should learn at least the basics of? For instance, if it was mandatory for all kids in the world to learn basic coding and scripting in all public schools, what would you recommend?

Job Research: Data Science

omicreativedev — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 05:24:00 +0000

I've been researching data science, as a career path, and I'm finding a strange type of comfort in the structure of 'courses' as a knowledge base.

The Effective Tips course outlines the typical workflow of a Data Scientist, popular tools and software used (and that you need to learn), basic hard skills needed (that you need to learn), and tips on making LinkedIn and Github spiffy and niche specific. It further continues with tips for CV/Resume enhancements, Demo and Portfolio building, interviewing, cautions, advice, etc. So you're left having a game plan.

It doesn't really expand on everything in detail or train you in specifics. For instance, you need to know Python and/or R languages. Julia as a bonus. But you need to know Python AT LEAST. Still, the course won't teach you Python itself. You have to learn that another way. It outlines approximately a dozen critical tools, skills, and other things you need to be proficient in, at minimum.

The course bullet pointed the key soft skills that improve candidacy. So I took the course that goes into soft skills in more detail.

Something that fascinates me deeply is the art of collaborative communication. I've been trained (in life) to NOT think out loud— the exact opposite talent, lol. I realized that I'm bad at talking WHILE coding/working and describing what I'm doing while I'm doing it and I need a lot of practice at that. I tried to do that for awhile at my desk as I was doing some linear equations and my kids were looking at me like I was crazy— ha!

Anyhow, these are the cool certificates of completion Udemy issued after the courses.

I'm new here...

omicreativedev — Sat, 23 Jul 2022 03:30:00 +0000

This is my first post. I just wanted to say hello to all and introduce myself. My nickname is Omi. I'm a mother of three kids, the two youngest of whom are grade-schoolers (10 & 13) with Autism. I'm back in school to finish my BS degree in Computer Science after spending the last decade a stay-at-home mother, musician, and self-taught freelance eCommerce and website developer.

I want to pursue my Masters as well, life willing, now that my kids are older and more independent. I consider myself a beginner despite having over a decade of experience making websites because I never went beyond the tools I used freelancing— primarily, HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL. Most of my coding was for sales funnels (and optimization), Shopify Development, and Woocommerce. Although I also became (by nature of the game) a "jack of all trades" eCommerce sales and technology consultant.

Alas, this is not what I WANT to do. It's what I COULD do (at the time) and HAD to do (all the time) to put food on the table. My relationships, schedule, family demands, and finances have kept me deadlocked for two decades. And as a minority middle aged female, without a degree or much experience, at the peak of COVID amidst inflation hell with handicapped children- I had a decision to make: Go back to school... or go on welfare.

I found the Dev dot To site while browsing through tutorial websites. I have a new LinkedIn but no connections. Enrolled officially in my program, I now have access to LinkedIn learning, and free vouchers from Microsoft which I'm pursuing on the side. I've yet to decide my career focus but I'm leaning toward Data Science since I genuinely loved problem solving with eCommerce clients using sales and customer data.

My interests are still very broad however. I enjoy amateur game dev, AI, ML, VR (shiny object syndrome), blockchain and generative art. My family and friends consider me a geek, but I'm just nowhere and completely blown away by the talents so many of you hold— it's inspiring and amazing. I only wish I could be half as good as some of you someday.

I've started reaching out online to be part of tech communities because my school is mostly online and my lifestyle doesn't offer me many opportunities to mix and meet anyone offline. Because of remote school, I don't even get to off-topic chit chat or socialize with my peers in class.

Anyhow, that's "About Me" enough. I hope to follow a few people I can learn from here.