It's been a minute....

....so, I hope you'll forgive me, although I am not so arrogant as to assume that the whole Internet was waiting for me!

The impetus for this blog post was twofold: first, I got my first ASF PR merged, and it was on their Arrow project! As you may or may not know, I work for IBM, and this quarter they had what they call an Open-Source JumpStart program for first-time contributors to strategic projects. I've really only contributed to my own projects, so it was exciting to get this pull request merged, and I'd like to keep contributing to either Arrow or some other project that isn’t mine.

And the other reason that I wanted to write? The idea of "eminence". IBM encourages its employees to essentially build their brand, their network, to "make a name for themselves" as it were. Such a goal for practitioners like myself is a worthwhile - and arguably necessary - goal. But, well, what is my "brand"? I've accumulated (and continue to accumulate) a lot of experience & opinions over the past 20+ years. However, I don't exactly have a fecund social media footprint, within which I could expound upon new products or processes.

So, back to my brand. So, what is it that keeps me going every day? Education. Lifelong learning. And sharing that love & knowledge with others. Oh, of course I have my tech chops for sure. I strive to keep my certifications fresh & updated, and always mess around with whatever interests me, but what I'm really passionate about is people: helping to solve problems, helping others, contributing however I can, guiding those at earlier stages of their career.

Now, don't get me wrong: whether it is an up-and-coming T(J)S framework, a new language version (looking at you Swift 6 or Tcl 9 [yes, Tcl is still alive, ubiquitous, and as useful as ever]), or just trying out a new tool in my (very) modest homelab, I can't stop learning & tinkering while keep abreast of new & emerging technologies, whether they be in the software development space or in the Dev(Sec)Ops/SRE/PE space. I read a lot, but I also have a family, and I need to keep prioritization at the forefront by planning my week's priorities and not stretching myself too thin, which is an unfortunate propensity of mine.

So, I think in the short term, in future entries I'd like to talk about my career up to this point: what I've done (professionally & personally), what I've leveraged, what (and how) I've learned, and how it all has not only shaped me into the professional I am today but what I yearn to be tomorrow, both as a practitioner and as a father.

But until then, a quick word about my first "major" project PR. It was labeled as a "good first issue", but it turned out to have more "tentacles" than I previously thought. Luckily, they didn't turn into bona fide rabbit holes, but it turned into more than a week's worth of work all the same. On the surface, it seemed like a relatively innocuous change to the Arrow core C++ libraries by changing a return type and its corresponding header prototype. But those changes caused test failures, which yanked me into the daunting world of R. You can view the whole sordid PR story here, but it all had a happy & mergeful ending. Essentially though, what pushed it over the finish line was a conditional preprocessor directive because another class essentially was tightly coupled to the older return type. Subsequently, some logical acrobatics were needed, but again the change was still relatively small in scope.

And my takeaways from my first "major" PR? Persistence, politeness, inquisitiveness, and due diligence are qualities that will serve you well in the open-source community (and in life of course).

And if you're having trouble getting your PR over the finish line, don't forget to step away from your PR work and take mental breaks however difficult it might be, because inspiration comes from disconnection (trust me - I know). But above all, practice balance! It is one of many lessons that I've learned over the years. Remember that you have other priorities too; don't let your passions or persistence monopolize your time, however tempting. You'll feel better about your daily life when you keep your eye on what's really important. Yes, some things will fall by the wayside, and saying no is something that took me a long time to get in the habit of. Life isn't easy for us people-pleasers :)

And with that, I will conclude, and I wish to thank you for coming on this short journey with me. As I related above, I hope to talk about projects I'm passionate about, how I try to make things fit, how I overcome those daily difficulties we all share, and how I try to stay in balance, both in work and at play.

Take good care, everybody, and I'll see you in the next one.