The End of a Life-Changing Era

Participating in Outreachy under the Wikimedia Foundation has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career so far. When I began, I wasn’t entirely confident I would meet my project requirements, but over the course of the internship, I not only met the requirements, but I also grew technically and learned a lot about how to collaborate in a distributed, open-source environment.

Internship Start vs Now

I can proudly say that the version of me from the start of the internship would not be able to understand most of the code I used in building my internship project because almost everything was new to me when we first started.
On top of that, I have gotten more comfortable with sharing my thought process, communicating my progress, iterating based on feedback, and improved my problem-solving skills because I encountered a lot of challenges while building my project.
I also got better at demoing my progress; I initially used to get nervous.

I initially hesitated to share my struggles with my mentors because I did not want to seem like I was incompetent, but they shared that everyone makes mistakes from time to time, these things happen, and sharing what you are stuck with might help resolve things faster.

My Biggest Fear About the Internship

I secretly dreaded a core feature for my project at the start of the internship because I could not wrap my head around how it was possible. For more context, the existing platform for banner creation involves coding banners from scratch using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The tool I built simplifies this process by providing a visual editor like Canva/Figma and generating the designed banner’s code to be exported for use on CentralNotice (the existing platform for running campaigns across Wikimedia).
I didn’t think I could accomplish that goal, to be honest, like, how do I turn design into code? Well… I am happy to share that my biggest fear did not come true. I took it one step at a time, my mentors gave me space to explore different ideas, fail, and retry, and I eventually got it working.

✨Internship Highlight✨

Sooo many amazing things happened during the internship, but to pick one, I’d say getting a MacBook Pro M4. It is like a symbol of how far I have come in my tech journey. When I first started, I was using an extremely slow laptop with the worst processor ever, an Intel Celeron, and just 4GB of RAM. Installing packages or setting up repos sometimes took up to 20 minutes. I would type and have to wait for my changes to reflect. That is how bad it was. I was able to get the MacBook with part of my Outreachy stipend, and now I do not even remember what it feels like to work on a slow laptop.
I initially did not want to get a new laptop, but the one I was using crashed during the internship, and I had already spent over a week waiting for it to be fixed, so I could not risk jeopardizing my internship because of that.

Mentor Appreciation

My mentors were a huge part of my growth during the internship. At first, I was always nervous, and one of my mentors, Michelle, reassured me that she is not my boss, we are here to collaborate on the project, and I should relax a little. When I made mistakes or my progress slowed because of one struggle or another, I wasn’t met with harsh reactions but with support and encouragement. My mentors gave me a lot of trust, which I really appreciate. They valued my opinions and my approaches to solving problems. I was encouraged to think critically about my decisions instead of just being given the answers.

Having that kind of support made it easier to take on tasks I initially found intimidating. Both my mentors helped me understand that it is okay to struggle sometimes. Alex mentioned that he also learns on the job, and it’s normal not to know everything. They also made me confident in my work by being proud enough to share it with several employees. I did weekly demos with my mentors and also demoed my project to other Wikimedia staff and volunteers who were not my mentors, which made me comfortable talking about my work. My mentor Michelle even joined a meeting on her day off, which I really appreciated.

Technical Skills I Picked Up

Like I said earlier, a lot of the stack I used for my internship project was completely new to me. I literally went from being a React developer to building the most complex tool I have ever made with Vue. I learned how to build a project with Vue 3 and TypeScript from scratch, including using Pinia for state management and Vue Router for routing. I also picked up working with Codex, Wikimedia’s design system, which includes components, design tokens, and composables. I also improved my debugging process, figured out how to break down tricky bugs into smaller steps, and became better at reading documentation. I spent a large portion of my internship learning, unlearning, and iterating.

Soft Skills I Picked Up

I learned how to ask for help and provide enough context so others can understand the problem. I also became more comfortable giving progress updates, even when I didn’t have everything figured out yet. There were some demos I did where things were a messy work in progress. I practiced receiving feedback, making changes, and circling back to confirm that the changes matched what was expected.

Project Outcome

I was tasked with building a visual editor that users could use to design banners and export the banner code, which is exactly what I accomplished over the duration of the internship.

Next Steps for My Project

I plan to continue contributing after the internship. My project is open source, and some extra features are yet to be implemented. I am still working on a design sharing feature as I write this. I also have to put together documentation for users on how to use the tool and for developers on how it works and how to add more templates. There have also been feedback cycles where we’ve collected feature and refinement suggestions, and I’ll try to address as many as I can.

Conclusion

Forever grateful to Outreachy for this opportunity, I now feel extremely comfortable making open source contributions. Just being selected as an Outreachy intern alone is a huge confidence boost, considering how competitive it is. I met so many talented people during the application process and during the internship.
Grateful for my amazing mentors, co-interns, and the entire Wikimedia Foundation for this amazing experience. Thanks to you all, the way I approach working on projects as a whole has changed from “there is no way I can do this” to “where do I start?”

Or is it? :)