DEV Community: ogechivivian

My journey into the IT space

ogechivivian — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 00:36:13 +0000

“When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.” — W. Clement Stone

How it all started...

It all started after my National Youth Service Corps when I got accepted into the six(6) months Interswitch Developer Academy. The first three months into the program was an intensive classroom training on data structures, algorithm, Software architectural design patterns, distributed systems, Database design, Java, ASP.NET and lots more. This was facilitated by various experts who have been in the fields for years. At the end of the first three months, we were assigned into groups to carry out a project(voucher-service) to make meaning to all what we have learnt from the experts.

The last three month(3) of the internship we integrated into the Engineering team, I worked with the DevOps team, assisted in managing the on-Prem CI/CD integration pipeline, process automation and monitoring. This was achieved using stack like Jenkins, Kubernetes, Docker, ELK, grafana, Prometheus, Chef, Ansible, Python, ruby and a lot more.

This internship built my interest around scripting and process automation. It played a major role in my interest with the Lua Scripting task in Wikimedia. I am so excited about the opportunity given to contribute to the Lua documentation on meta and mediawiki, it has greatly improved my communication skills and remote working experience. The continuous guidance and follow-ups from my mentors have made the journey as easy as possible.

I am open for a full time/part-time job, internship, remote work, a grant or a volunteer position. I want to continue developing the skills of automation to aid continuous delivery and monitoring process.

The journey thus so far in Wikimedia

ogechivivian — Sun, 24 Jan 2021 01:00:06 +0000

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” The saying of Arthur Robert Ashe Jr., a well-known American tennis player, is true and valid for all paths of life because to reach the desired destination, it is important to pay attention and place importance on the journey that takes there.

Its has been over a month plus I started the journey as a Wikimedia intern via the outreachy program initiative and I must say it has been a series of learning and unlearning process with the help of my mentors. In December I started the contribution in improving the Lua documentation on Mediawiki and meta-wiki pages,
the first few weeks were spent on getting familiar with the environment, setting up my workspace(sandbox) with the help of my mentor and the resources provided I became familiar with the environment and fully set up to commence.

Technical writing is not just about understanding technical information and recording it in a document. Technical writing takes high-level information and processes it into digestible content for a specific audience. With the knowledge of what technical documentation entails and its role in the sustainability of a project, I was able to identify the audience and gather a lot of information, this help with coming up with a model and structure which was carefully drafted under the supervision of my mentors.

These few weeks I have worked on improving the Lua tutorial and Lua scripting documentation with the help of my mentors and I must say it has been a learning process, the need to understand what you are writing about can't be over-emphasize as it's of paramount importance and it has been an interesting ride while unlocking new skills you never know you possess.

During the cause of the internship, I have had a couple of meetings with my mentors where ideas have been shared, and most importantly I have learned a lot from the knowledge sharing. I most say there has been tremendous progress on the work so far.

I just wanted to leave a short thank you note to my Mentors, Wikimedia and Outreachy for this great opportunity to contribute in Review and improve Lua documentation on meta and MediaWiki thus the journey so far!

The Importance of Documentation

ogechivivian — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 22:47:18 +0000

Hello Fellow, its yet another blog post as part of the series on my journey as an intern with Wikimedia via the Outreachy Internship Program.

Wikimedia is a non-profit charitable organisation which has been running a lot of projects, some of them being Wikipedia, wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, meta-wiki etc where you can contribute whenever and as much as you want. Wikimedia projects are made by volunteers, just like me and you. yes, I mean you reading this article today. In the next few paragraphs, I will be writing about my contribution to the Lua Scripting (available via Scribunto) project.

Documentation should always be considered a journey rather than a destination, and being kept up to date with any changes is almost as important than the initial creation; out of date records can sometimes be worse than no documentation at all. Hence the need to keep comprehensive documentation can not be over-emphasize. I am currently working on Review and improve Lua documentation on meta and MediaWiki.

Why Lua?

Lua is supported as a scripting language in all Wikimedia Foundation sites (since March 2013), via the Scribunto extension. The Lua project aims to make it possible for MediaWiki end-users to use a proper scripting language that will be more powerful and efficient than ad-hoc ParserFunctions-based logic. Complex templates and ParserFunctions causes a lot of performance (some pages are overloaded with templates and require 40 seconds or more to parse/render) and bottlenecks.

Having well-organised and up-to-date documentation makes integrations/applications easier and support systems running smoothly, and most of all keep our contributors/volunteers happy!.

I am super excited about the opportunity to make this happen.

It’s okay to feel stuck...Everyone struggles

ogechivivian — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 15:48:54 +0000

Hello! I am super excited as this is my second blog post as an intern with Outreachy working on the Lua Scripting documentation for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Today I wanted to tell you how I got here. For every milestone, there is always a starting point, it comes with its own challenges and struggles. It’s okay to feel stuck at some point while achieving the set goals and tasks because of everyone struggles, including experts. Hey! I am no exception to this rule. It doesn’t matter what other people think or say, struggling is part of life.

On the 24th of Nov 2020, I received the acceptance mail as an Outreachy intern contributing to improving Lua documentation for Wikimedia and it’s been three weeks since. I will be sharing my experience so far with you, yes you. I was new to technical writing, Lua scripting and contributing to the Open Source community. It was an opportunity to learn something different and get familiar with the community.

Here is a little background to the project, Lua is supported as a scripting language in all Wikimedia Foundation sites (since March 2013), via Scribunto extension. The Lua documentation that exists on meta-wiki and mediawiki.org needs some improvement. I am working on improving the documentation to explain what Lua is, why Lua, and getting started with Lua on media-wiki. My mentors Pavithra and Doug have made my onboarding process so smooth, helping out with a lot of resources and follow-up sessions to get me up to speed with the task.

As a newbie to technical writing, it comes with its own challenges and struggles, trying to simplify and provide explanations and adequate references for my users. I had a couple of challenges these few weeks ranging from getting started with editing on the wiki, an overview of Lua scripting and drafting the content in order not to put too much information than needed on the introductory page. These blockers were shared with my mentors and a follow-up session was set to walk me through the process of overcoming the issues at hand.

Technical writing and Lua scripting is an interesting sphere, these past weeks I have learnt that it’s okay to NOT be okay. Reach out your hand for help. Seek the help you need. GET HONEST and GET TO WORK!

THE NEW NORMAL

ogechivivian — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 01:36:56 +0000

Hi Everybody ! My name is Ogechi Vivian , I'm an Outreachy Intern with Wikimedia. This will be my first blog post,2020 has been a challenging time for everybody’s mental health, including my own, I had a lot of time this year to sit and do nothing. But you know what? The pandemic has taught us the value of slowing down and some new slogan such as Trust you are keeping safe, keep staying safe , social distancing and lots more.

Over a period of time, my routine has become so strict that you can set your watch according to my routine and gradually i started making some changes like exercising for more than an hour.

The impact of Technology during the global pandemic can not be over emphasis as this serves as a communication tool(social media, zoom etc) to always check up on friends and family virtually during the lockdown that was like the only means of keeping up with what is happening with everybody even while isolating.

Like the saying goes when life throws lemon on you make lemonade drink out of it. In one of my chat time with a friend Open Source Contribution and Outreachy Program was mentioned. I can remember the joy when my first Pull Request(PR) was merged on the first contributions repo on Github it was a win for me.

From the application stage down to the contribution stage where I had to get familiar with some tools(gerrit, phabricator). And here I'm an Outreachy Intern with Wikimedia. I have recorded some wins this year by being adaptable, invincible and formidable. I look forward to making an amazing contribution and better blog post as we progress with the Internship.

A big Congratulation to myself and other outreachy21 interns... Cheers !!!