Hey! Time to talk software development.

At the time of joining LEAP, I already counted with some knowledge of software development practices. I’ve been a student for the better part of four years, and have participated in many small scale projects, including multiple hackathons and several hobby projects. I have also had the opportunity to work on corporate software projects… My heart goes out to my fellow kin scattered across the lands which find themselves battling those demons.

One important thing, however, is that I have never been part of an open source project. While I may have used open source libraries and software in the past, I have never actively participated towards such a project. Naturally, this is both exciting and terrifying. Exciting because you have the chance to contribute towards something really cool and hopefully that motivates you to do your thing. Terrifying, well, because we all know that software development can crush your soul at times. And now, that can happen while people silently judge your code and watch over your every commit! Just kidding.

Jokes aside, the couple of weeks I’ve spent developing for LEAP have been nothing if not great. Reading that last sentence out loud, I think “developing” is probably a strong word. What I mean by this is: be prepared to study a lot of other peoples’ code when you join an open source initiative. At first, you are 100% lost. After a couple of days of reading, taking notes, doodling diagrams, and asking a LOT of questions, you start to obtain an initial understanding of the system. Luckily, every one of my incessant questions has been answered by my tutors as well as by other contributors of the project.

The first impression I have so far is that I feel welcome in this project. I’ve been given the liberty to mess around with the code, understand things, propose new ideas and mechanisms, and ultimately use my software engineering knowledge towards a common objective. Of course, the password manager app is still the goal. After all, how are we supposed to store all kinds of digital treasure if not with this app? ;)

-V.