Outreachy - Everyone Struggles

Three weeks have passed since my internship with Outreachy began, and so far it's been fantastic. I’m currently working on creating a new installer for the LibreOffice software. I vividly remember how excited I was when I learned about LibreOffice during the Outreachy contribution period.

Outreachy organized a Twitter space where they shared tips for the internship. In one of those sessions, we were encouraged to select projects we find interesting. Because we’ll work on the project for three months. So, if we choose projects that we do not find interesting, it might be difficult for us to cope after getting selected for the internship. So, I had it in mind when searching for projects to select “an interesting project”.

Whenever I came across projects that seemed interesting, I took the time to read about the organization. Then I saw LibreOffice, I looked it up online to know what the project was about. Before that time, I’d been looking for a good office suite I could use on my Macbook since Microsoft Office wasn’t free. I was happy to find LibreOffice.

MY STRUGGLES:

During the contribution period, I spoke with one of my project mentors, Marina, to discuss the internship tasks and to get research resources. She mentioned “triaging bugs” and “bibisect”. I had no idea what those words meant, I’d only heard of the word “triage“ in medical settings, not in programming. She took the time to explain the meaning. But of course, I still didn’t understand it at that time. She shared some wiki documentation that explained and even had steps I could follow to triage and bibisect a sample bug. Also, one of the project coordinators, Ilmari, hosts a live stream session where he triages bugs, this has helped me to see how identical triaging is in both the programming and medical worlds.

I also struggled to set up my development environment, and understand how the WiX toolset needed to create the installer works. I asked my mentors and my fellow intern for help, I did my research and tried out different things. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I pray to Jehovah for wisdom and strength to carry on.

Fast forward to now, I get how the WiX Toolset works and was able to create a windows installer for a simple app I built with C#. Thanks to the helpful resources I got from my mentors Jussi and Marina, and my fellow intern Xime.

In summary, there will be times when you struggle, but don’t be shy to ask for help. Others are always there to help you.