Published Mar 23, 2017
In this striking title, “passion” refers to me, an open-source enthusiast & curious developer while “opportunity” refers to the Zulip organization which is taking part in Google Summer of Code this year.
Google Summer of Code was just around the corner and, while trying to find a nice organization to work with, I came across Zulip.
GSoC provides us with a nice opportunity to explore and interact with the open-source community. Working in an open-source project gives you a chance to learn from experts, pick up good practices from the community, sharpen your skills and get sound feedback.
Coding is an adventure. It’s demanding, requires a lot of patience and perseverance, but it’s an equally rewarding endeavor. I am very passionate about coding & love solving problems. Whether it be competitive coding or app development, it has always brought out the problem solver in me. I saw a great learning opportunity in GSoC and started working in Zulip.
Zulip is an open-source chat application that is used by various teams for communication. You will love to use it because of its wide range of features and smooth user interface. Most importantly, people in this organization are knowledgeable, helpful & extremely welcoming. There are many aspects that you will like about Zulip. Here are few of them:
Code Quality Zulip has strict coding guidelines which you have to adhere to in order to get your code merged. This, in turn, encourages developers to adopt those guidelines and hence writing good quality code even though you are just learning the language. Not just that, you have a chance to look at the rest of the code and see how well it’s written and documented. Code Reviews People in Zulip care about fellow contributors and help them to grow as developers with the specific “code review” stream in Zulip developers chat group. In addition to that, when you push your code, you get feedback from the experts associated with that project and hence it gives you a chance to improve your understanding of the project you’re working on. This is like getting a free-of-cost personal guidance about how to write good code. Appreciation We, as software developers, really need appreciation for our work, and the open-source community makes sure we have enough of that. In my whole experience with Zulip, I have never received even a single comment that was insulting or demotivating. Everyone is super encouraging and helpful. English Tutorial Zulip developers chat group has a specific stream “Learning” where Sumana Harihareswara’s initiation helps students to improve their English writing skills.
By far my contribution journey to Zulip has been great! I am mostly working on the Zulip-electron app. Here are my up-to-date contributions and ongoing work:
Pull request: #118 fixed issue: #78 There was no support for localhost Zulip servers like “localhost:9991” in the Electron app. I fixed that problem and made switching between local and online servers seamless. Pull request: #128 fixed the following bugs: 1-There was a white screen appearing during startup every time you loaded the app, same problem in server window & “About Zulip” window. 2-No Title & Icon was present in switch server window tab in the taskbar. 3-The switch server window remained open even after we have switched the server, multiple switching leads to many unclosed switch server windows. Pull request: #130 fixed issue: #124 There was no support for handling server 5XX error. When the server remained down the app showed a clueless white screen. This issue was fixed. Pull request: #134 fixed issue: #110 There was no support for showing unread count in app’s tray icon. Now the unread count is shown if you hover over the tray icon. Have to work on the tray icon image to fix this issue completely. Ongoing work: Issue: #126 zulip-electron currently doesn’t support self-signed certificates. I am trying to find a fix for this issue.
All of that being said, I would like to add something at the end. The mere thought that “Your few lines of code is going to affect lives of millions of people every day by easing out their experience” is very intriguing in itself, and that’s what excites me the most being a developer.
To be a part of Google’s global program which focuses on your coding skills and will affect millions of people all over the world is no less than a dream come true for me.
Looking forward to be a part of GSoC 2017 through Zulip and contribute it with all my heart.