Maybe it's just because I've been setting up wackloads of dev environments and picking projects, but this whole Prepping for Outreachy business is making me think that there's a lot more to jobs than all these job interviews involving little code challenges get at. There's a baloney-ton of:
- Talking to people
- Figuring out what to work on
- Stalking channels on IRC
Nah, actually I guess this stuff is probably pretty specific to my current situation. (The last one was kindof a joke, except it's definitely true.) I am also spending a ton of time waiting, for:
- Tests to run
- Setup scripts to run / Installs + Downloads to finish
like sometimes more than an hour. What! Never in my life have I waited so long for anything.* I guess I sortof also wait for
- Answers on how to proceed / Help
- PR approval / Feedback
- Conversations to happen on IRC that I can stealthily glean information from
Hopefully once I am more involved in the community and more informed about proper processes and procedures, I will feel less of a need to do that last one.
Anyway, it just feels like I do a lot of "meta" tasks, and less actual "programming" tasks lately. To counter that, I've also been trying to throw a few HackerRanks in to keep myself sharp. When I can ignore the hair-rip-out-inducing input forms of these HackerRanks, they are pretty fun lil thangs! I remember some people at RC raving about how addicting they are, and now that I spend all day job hunting (sort-of), they certainly are a tasty treat...I can very much see how one might wind up not wanting to walk away.
Another note - my monitoring of IRC is not good for me. It's like when online-checkins started at RC; I see what everyone else is doing, and how they're interacting with others, and I get sad that I'm not doing that. Let's look at some possible solutions (gee, I hope these fancy new markdown tables I just learned how to build render into HTML (did I use the word 'render' gramatically there?)).
| Solution | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Don't lurk on IRC. | Wait, why does this column exist. The pro of all of these is obvi to not get sad. | FOMO! Miss out on: helping people, seeing other people be helped, gossip, internal decision making, bugs, feature and product discussion |
| Participate | Ah this has a bonus pro of obtaining more information and potentially making contacts! | May annoy/burden people, takes time, must constantly check because I can't figure out how to get notified, have to pick 0) channel and 1) topic and 2) words |
My biggest concern with participating more is that these people already spend a lot of their time managing wannabe contributors and I want to be independent and only ask for help when necessary. At the end of the day, it's probably just like most things - there is no right answer. Just whatever.
This post has rambled. I'm out.
* It is definitely a lie that I have never waited more than an hour for anything. Things I have waited more than an hour for include:
- Flights (to get on)
- Flights (for other people to get off)
- Bedtime
- Dancing
However - when I wrote that, I was reminded of the thought that "Never in my life have I worked so hard for anything.", which is how I feel about programming. This probably deserves to be an article on its own, but it's a truth - never in my life have I worked so hard for anything as I have to learn to code. This is a fact that continues to awe me. Stay tuned for further notes on this matter.