Hello Everyone,
I’m finally publishing my last Outreachy blog, which has been long overdue due to exam.
Looking back at my internship, it's awesome to see how much I've grown and how thankful I am for the experience. I got to work with popular open source project, learn new skills, feel more confident in soft skills, and chance to meet two amazing people. I want to share with you all about my time during the internship.
The beginning was tough with a lot of challenges, but I learned so much after that. I had two amazing mentors, Michael Weghorn and Heiko Tietze, who were always there to help me with any questions or doubts I had. Seeing how they solve problems and think about things taught me a lot, and I hope to be as skilled as they are one day. I would be forever grateful for the time they spend for me during the internship. I couldn't have got any better set of mentors and project than this.
Over the course of 12 weeks, I worked on enhancing the UI of LibreOffice through the integration of native Qt Widgets with Qt-based VCL plugins. My tasks included working on simple message dialog with native Qt widgets, working on a parser and methods for widget creation that interpret .ui files and generate the corresponding Qt widget creation. This project was really big, and finishing it completely in just three months was too much to expect. But, I think I've helped set up a good starting point for future to continue from. This project is really interesting because it makes LibreOffice easier and nicer to use for people who use KDE/Qt frameworks which could help a lot of LibreOffice users. The cool thing about working on open-source projects like this is that lots of people can work on them at the same time. Even though my internship is over, I'm excited to keep helping with this project later on.
The experience during the internship also helped me get better opportunities after completing the Outreachy internship. I have learned so many things during the internship that it would make a long list if I were to write all of those. But the most important things I learned are:
But the most important things I learned are:
How to work on open-source projects, including talking about changes, making updates, getting feedback, and adding those changes to the patch.
How to approve big problems
Getting better at using tools like Gerrit and Git.
Getting better at understanding big code base that other people wrote, something that used to be hard for me.
In the first blog, I talked about the three core values - Kindness, Hard work, and Curiosity. I would say that this internship has enhanced these qualities, and made me a better person.
What’s Next?
I’d like to continue working in the open source space, and am excited to explore more of Libreoffice and other similar open source communities out there! I feel Open source is best way to improve your developing skills especially when you have unusual background.
Although my amazing Outreachy internship with the Libreoffice Foundation has come to an end, my journey in open source has just begun.
I’m excited for what comes next.