DEV Community: Alex Romanova

Spying on Starchart

Alex Romanova — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 00:21:12 +0000

It's been a year since I was supposed to work on Telescope for a class. When the war in Ukraine started in February 24th, 2022, I almost fully stopped contributing. Now, this year I am trying to do more, even though it's not my class anymore. Because I wish that I did more back then.

This year, we have 2 open source items on the menu! Telescope 4.0, and Starchart.

What is Starchart?

Firstly, it's a fresh project. It has NOTHING done. That sounds super exciting. People are free to do what they want! Well, people actually enrolled in the course, that is. I will try to fill in the gaps that people leave behind.

Secondly, it's supposed to be a service for students to host their own projects. Starchart is supposed to provide a subdomain. Note, that Starchart is an actual needed service that will be used. Even though Telescope is cool and all, the blogging platform is used just by Seneca Open source students. Starchart, however, will be used by college faculty and students of other classes.

Why do we need this?

Firstly, hosting consts money. It's not much, but it is a cost. Many classes which we take teach us to set up our own project somewhere. It used to be Heroku, which now has become paid. We still need a solid space to host things in.

Secondly, using external services doesn't ensure enough safety. Using a Seneca specific service allows students to trust handling their own data. Otherwise, they might have to post their private information on a public space, which leaves people vulnerable to doxxing. Some students might have stalkers… (it's not fun, believe me.)

Technology

I've used this tech stack list to make a visual representation:

Basically, we will have some parts that are the same in Telescope. Such as:

Now, most of those I already know. I've dealt with ones that are marked with italic. And here's a list of tech that is new now:

Now, this looks like enough overlap of new and familiar. Even in the first list, however, there are still untouched topics.

Specifically, I am interested in learning Satellite, SAML2 and Docker from the older tech; And in Remix, Chakra UI, and AWS for newer. But, again, it will all depend on which of those will be left for me to work on, it's really up for grabs by actual students enrolled in the course. So, we'll see what I'll end up doing.

My role

So, concretely, I have already been interested in the following:

Design (color schemes, logos, branding)
Documentation (explaining how things work for people that haven't learned it yet)
Architecture (discussing tech decisions, code design solutions, planning)
Docker (setting up containers for all the moving parts we will have)

Consistent design

We currently have multiple open source services. Telescope, Satellite and Starchart. Design wise, this needs to be highlighted.

Common themes of our open source creations — tools for space exploration. Themes to take a note of are — curiosity, creation, exploration, knowledge, excitement, sharing, connection, awe, scale.

Color scheme

We have common elements, and then we have differences. The way I think to implement it design wise, is to use same colors and a different accent color. The space theme should be outlined with some darker, blue-toned neutral color. Space is a dark environment, with rare solid objects in it. Therefore, we should have a deeper undertone that unites all of our products, with an accent color that differs which represents those rare findings.

Starchart, as a service used by Seneca students and faculty, should also use Seneca's accent color. Therefore, we are already constricted to 2 colors. Main background color of open source themes, and the red Seneca accent color. Every other colors we decide on has to work with those 2.

Logos

Here's what I thought about logos… It's not just the colors, themes should also be represented with design elements within logos.

We have 3 things: Telescope, Satellite, and Starchart so far. Here are questions to ask:

If there will be a united theme for the logos, we would need to adjust Telescope's too.
Is Satellite a separate enough product? Does it need a logo, is it considered its own tool, or is it just a part of Telescope?
Ideas for Starchart. So far I imagine stars which have connecting lines between them, which would form some shape, to represent a constellation. Do we use letter S, same as we use T for Telescope? How much angle do we add to the S? Do we keep it symmetrical? I have a feeling, such a logo is already used somewhere… Like, cmon, it's an S that's in a hexagon.

I played around with some ideas, and I need to create more.

If you noticed, I thought we could unite our style with a strong diagonal line that is formed by the object we have at the front, and another diagonal line that counteracts it, which will divide the space into 2 colors.

I've also thought, if we were to use a hexagon, perhaps we should continue the theme of shapes. However, it seemed to not go anywhere, and is probably too common of a solution.

Documentation

It's not that I'm especially interested in documentation, I have been doing it last year too. It's just that I see an opportunity to document the tools people will have to relearn this year. And when they collect the knowledge, we can record it.

There's been some gaps in our Telescope documentation. Such as: SAML2 SSO, Satellite, general architecture. I also wonder, if we could just add our new docs to Telescope's Docusaurus service.

Mostly, I just want to make sure to document the progress that students make as they do it, so that I can ask questions right away, and get all the information that I need while it's still available.

Architecture

Even though making my architecture chart helped me understand some of it… I still don't fully get it.

So, we will have a web part — that one I get. Now, actual functionality is where I struggle.

We will need a DNS. Then, we will need encryption. We will also need authentication. All of those mentioned need to be a separate microservice encompassed in a docker container. And then we will need to have it all connect to each other.

Well, maybe I do get… some… a bunch… of it… but. How exactly does that DNS part work? And where do we encrypt? And what do we encrypt? And how? And what's that Azure active directory part?

Also… Starchart will be using React too… nooo! I tried to steer people to try a new front end framework which is not React, but nobody seems interested. Well, at least I found these cool charts on this cool website.

Docker

Now, I have a personal challenge with Docker. I wanted to learn it and use it last year, but I have struggled with installation until I figured out that my Win10 version was too old for WSL. So, I have decided to postpone it until I can upgrade my Windows on my laptop. Then, last semester I had to use virtual machines, so I didn't want to reinstall everything.

I just installed Win11, which should finally have WSL. And so far, the installation process, even with some problems, seems to be going well! I went around not using MS store, and having to install distributives manually, but I'm not stuck. Haven't managed to use Telescope containers yet, but I don't see any roadblocks so far.

The class

So far, people have been researching topics, presenting them in meetings and adding them to the wiki. I think what is needed to figure out our work - is to figure out our team first. What people are familiar with, what they want to work on, and what is a must have requirement.

I can access the meetings, but I can't figure out how much I can actually participate to be reasonable. I'm excited, but I wonder at what point Dave will just tell me to ~~shut the fuck up~~ stop :D

How Telescope made me a better Developer

Alex Romanova — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 21:43:55 +0000

Starter info

If you already know about me, you can skip this section
Firstly, I am a student of a Software Development degree. I will graduate in 2 more semesters. I am currently in my 2nd semester of co-op. In Winter 2021-2022 I have taken a course called "Open source Project", which involved all of us students working on this single open source project - Telescope. This project uses React, docker, docusaurus, supabase, and other tools. In the end - it was up to us, students to take it in a direction we want to evolve it in.

Real experience

So what was so special about that class?

Team size

Firstly, it was the amount of people working on a single project. That semester - it was 17 of us. So far the biggest groups we ever had were of 4 people. We had longer projects before, where we did planning and implementation over several semesters within the same group. However, it was never that big before.

This emulates a more realistic work environment. Currently, in my co-op, I am a part of a ~20 person team, all have their roles, but all work on a single tool. We all communicate between each other, ask for help, information, updates, arrange meetings and get to know each other.

Existing codebase

So far in our college assignments, even if those were larger projects, and even in our personal projects - we always had to start anew. No matter what our task was, we create it from 0, and usually we get pretty familiar with our own code and tools.

With Telescope - that was way different. We already had a working application that was handed onto us by the previous class. We had a lot of code, tools and decisions that we have never seen before, and we had to adjust to that environment. We also had many of their older problems, bugs and unexplored directions.

That, again, simulates a realistic work environment well. You will be new in your team, while they all have made a lot of progress. You will see their code and will have to understand it, and change it to add your own improvements. Learning to integrate into an existing environmnent is a very useful skill to develop.

Freedom of exploration

With college - you don't get much freedom. Most of the time - you have a specific task, with specific instructions and concrete tools to implement it. We did have some freedom in our other classes... sure. In our larger project, we got to decide what to develop. However, time and knowledge constraints usually led us to choose a familiar path. If we want to deliver a product for a grade - in the end we better stick with a tool we can rely on.

Telescope, however, embraced exploration. Not only we didn't have a definite task - we were the ones to decide what the tasks will be. We got to choose what to work on personally, and could even come up with tasks we would assign to someone else. It's not only the tasks, but also the tools. Want to add a completely new framework? Use a new language? No problem. It's on you to make it work, but it is allowed and is supported - us, students, like new toys to play with. If you yourself get excited with using this shiny new language - others will get excited to help you.

Management

Now, my favorite part.
In college, we never get to be the boss. You usually deliver to your professor. And even on your co-op, or some freelance work - you are usually the newcomer, the noob, the lowest of the foodchain. You are never the one to make decisions.

Telescope made us temporary managers. We had to lead weekly meetings, and were responsible for that week's progress. You had to know what was going on. You had to make sure people do their jobs. You were the one to say - "no, let's focus on this and not that". And it was awesome.

Now, don't get me wrong, it was terrifying. How - me - a student that knows nothing will lead other people? I just got here, guys. However, let me explain how and why exactly it was awesome. Or, at the very least - useful.

Dev VS Manager

I, as most of us here, have always thought - "Management? Who wants to do that... What fun is it to talk to people who do the work? It's much cooler to be the one doing the work, actually coding." Until.. I tried to be one in Telescope. And I realised - somehow, I want to be aware what's going on. I want to know what our progress is. I want to prioritise directions that are essential.

Firstly it was because all of those things mentioned... WERE WRONG. I see a documentation problem, and I WANT TO FIX IT. And NOBODY ELSE DOES! It has to be me. To fix those things, you need to know what's going on... so, ok. I gotta find out what's going on. I need to ask people, read code, talk to them. BECAUSE NOBODY WILL! And as I'm fixing all these annoying little steps, I realise I'm actually doing.. management. Since I am learning what everyone is doing, getting just enough information to be aware, but not deep enough to actually code - I get to be aware of everything.

In Telescope usually people would go into their own niches. They will explore a new tool, or develop a new service and will become "kings" in their own little kingdom. Now, suddenly, we have technically a large project - but in reality - we have many newly established kingdoms scattered all around. And nobody else knows what those kingdoms are, except their kings. How would anyone figure out the direction to go, if nobody is aware of the whole picture? People need to communicte somehow. And I was the one to get this information out of them.

Once I know the information - I can inform the rest of the kingdom. And then - we can make our decisions.

I can't exactly put my finger on why this is cool. But I keep getting compelled to establish paths of communication, softening the edges of the development process and filling in the gaps of unknowns. If not cool - it for sure is important. It has to be done.

How it improves you as a developer

It's very likely that my excitement didn't transfer onto you. I get it - planning, meetings, documentation, talking to people... - isn't fun. But let me tell you how it helps you to have such an experience.

In the work environment you will likely have a manager. You will have some kind of meetings, some kind of communication between other members.

If you ever have been in that role yourself - where you had to know what is happening, and you just had no idea. Here you have a deadline, and you're responsible that this team of cogwheels
deliver the product - how do you even figure out if you're doing well or are fucked? Now, suddenly, you need to know what is going on. You need cogwheels to communicate to you their progress, direction, problems. You need meetings.

As a developer it is easy to get annoyed with management. Sometimes because the management themselves actually suck. But sometimes - you really gotta understand the other side. Once you understand what they want to hear from you; once you've had experience of the one who's asking and getting unclear answers - you start to change the way you communicate yourself.

Let's make a web dev analogy, wee!

You have 2 application endpoints: front end and back end API. You need API calls to transfer information between them.

You can just dump everything in a JSON and forget about it. You can send just a single thing. You can make a request once a week, once a day, or every second. What, in what format, and how often do you actually send it? You need to know what the API is expecting. You need to know their data format. You need to know why API even asks you for data in the first place. You are the front end, and the manager is the API. Or - the other way around, if you'd prefer to be the back end. No matter in which environment - you need to know what both sides are sending and expecting. That is how communication works.

Communication is, truly, essential. As long as you have a team - you need it. Somewhere in your career you might want to advance onto higher positions. Those usually involve more management the higher you go. A senior developer. A system architect. A team lead. Higher knowledge, higher responsibility, higher salary. If you plan to grow - this is the path. And it requires to learn these skills of management, planning and communication. The better way to show your employees you are ready for a raise - prove you already have these skills. Show them you meet the requirements. And they will notice. Because other developers - won't.

And that is how the experience of being in a manager position improves you as a developer.

Hacktoberfest preparations

Alex Romanova — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 02:27:00 +0000

About Hacktoberfest

Hacktoberfest is a month long event on Github that encourages contributing to open source projects. It happens every year during October. If you complete at least 4 approved pull requests - you get sent merch!

For contributors

Many people aren't familiar with open source, so this becomes a great introduction. There is a specific label "good first issue" that is targeted towards newcomers. Either people who are new to programming, new to github, new to contributing to open source.. All of those apply. Issues of this label tend to be simple and don't have to be coding related. They could be text fixes in documentation, simple changes in color, translations... The experience of completing a "good first issue" lets people to get used to the whole git system, improves their confidence and gets them introduced to various new and interesting projects they otherwise would never find.

My experience as a contributor was hectic. I struggled to find appropriate for my skill level issues and I could never be sure if I can solve them in time, or they are too easy to count. Many projects lacked guidance. Most problems I had were with starting out - not even in fixing an actual coding problem.

Therefore, I decided to fix this issue for those like me. After my experience with Telescope, I have started seeing it as my project. I am a part of this now, and I am responsible for its growth to some degree.

For maintainers

As a repository owner, you are required to prepare issues for contributors. You need to make sure a newcomer can understand what is required with ease so that they focus on the actual implementation.

Once the issue is ready, maintainers need to assign "Hacktoberfest" label to it. Answer questions of contributors that find this issue and are trying to solve it. Assign it to those who wants to solve it. When they have made their pull request - review it and, if all is good, merge. Add the "hacktoberfest-accepted" label in the end to make sure the contributor has this issue count towards their progress.

Now on the other side!

Now that I'm familiar with Telescope, I can try attending hacktoberfest from a maintainer side. It will be a different experience, but now I know what to do, as I have already been in the contributor role. I will be also trying to do the same for SevenTV, which doesn't use github issues for their task tracking. So I would have to make issues myself and do their maintenance.

Telescope progress

Isn't this kind of early...? Yes. But there are many issues and I know myself well. I better at least start this, I know I won't finish it any time soon. Hopefully, if I line out the structure and a direction, people will follow. I'm not the only maintainer of this, so I want us to cooperate and be ready when October comes.

Actual steps

Firstly, I have started a project to track the issues preparation.

Please make sure to read the README of it (if you are a maintainer). If not - I will show you what is there now.

Of course, by the time you are reading this, it might change. Hovewer, the general idea/outline is there.

Once Hacktoberfest comes, we will have the list of issues already. We would only need to assign the label to them.

Additionally

I thought I might as well make an introductory video for hacktoberfest participants. If you read my past posts, I had mentioned something called "issue seller" before. Hacktoberfest would be a great opportunity to try out this format.

It is also a good experience for me to get familiar with some issues/parts of the project I never dealt with before. Before I introduce them to others, I should know enough about them myself.

The final sheriff

Alex Romanova — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 00:47:04 +0000

Completed issues

There's a lot to go over. Let's start with things I specifically did.

Project description

Firstly, something I decided to take upon myself to complete, as time kept going and it kept staying incomplete. The Supabase project description. Basically, take the info from the existing docs and rewrite it in a certain format. Before we leave Telescope to the next people, I want to make sure all projects have proper descriptions so people don't get lost.

SSO service documentation

As a part of the larger REST API documentation issue, I decided to complete all things I can. Since the recording describing how SSO service basically works was available, all that was left - to write it down and format it. I also know that there were more things to it that I couldn't gather from the said recording. I have decided to add those as additional issues, while shipping at least the main idea of how it works.

There is also this nice comment that collects information on SSO stuff, you might want to check it out.

Status service documentation

Another part of the big REST API documentation issue. I was told Status was not difficult to figure out, so I took it as well. It turned out to actually not be that bad. The dashboard area seemed like it had more to it, but... it turned out to be pretty simple. I think there is a lot more we can do with it. Or, probably, not we, but the next batch of students to come.

Docusaurus home page

This was supposed to be a more interactive and cool visual, but in the end, there turned out to not be enough time. Making things look fancy isn't as important as making things make sense. I decided to put my resources into documentation, especially that REST API one that we had for so long. Besides, I did get stuck on trying to make the animation I want work.

Perhaps, I should file an issue to improve my SVGs with animation. I also thought about how easy it was for me to create such simplistic static art. It wouldn't have to be a 16:9 scenery, but perhaps some smaller elements or parts that can be later placed here and there, and maybe animated in the future. I just want to give people toys they can then play with and put all around the website. I'm sure they will find a nice place for them.

I also decided to leave some basic level issues fixing some of the formatting. Since the next active semester to work on this would be hacktoberfest students, I know they will need some good first issues.

Merging the two About us versions

Now, this one I want to note, I didn't actually do. I realized it wasn't as simple as I first thought, outlined the steps to be done, and then asked for someone else with more experience with React to take it on. And someone did!

Issues created

As mentioned, I have created some issues myself, mostly simple ones for people to get used to the process. Here are they:

Removing the tutorial panel from docusaurus home page
(Didn't file it myself, but did decide to make one in my PR) Making the SVG art responsive
SSO doc - SAML-2
SSO doc - new functionality
SSO doc - supabase
Should add later? Animating the SVG home page
Will be added Project keeper role hand off

Managing

I was one of the sheriffs of the last week. The most fun time! Well, not as fun as somewhere in the middle, where I would also get to communicate about people's progress and make priority lists... But still! I know it's a very important week and I know it is a tough one. Things need to be under control and things need to be done right. That's why I signed myself up for this - I like and can be on top of things. I'm happy I did.

I did a lot of maintenance steps this week, especially towards the end of it.

Meetings

We only had the one meeting this week. It wasn't an 8 am one! I set a time for 2pm on Wednesday for out last triage. Seemed like a good all around time. Many people were missing, but we also had a lot of engagement from those who did attend. This was the outline for the meeting:

Have PRs done by today!
Tomorrow at 2pm release, might shift to later if needed
Regular triage
Priorities
People's last input
Anything you want to add

We started with a simple going-over-issues-PRs, asking what's up with those... But this time, a little differently. This time it was important to ditch things that aren't important/too time-consuming. We had people that were free to pick up what's important and we also had people that had too much on their plate. It wasn't a simple "will you get it done?" anymore, but managing people's workload and dividing some tasks into smaller versions of the same tasks. We ditched a bunch of things. We rearranged tasks to other people. I, myself, changed my focus from visual docusaurus stuff to completing REST API docs. Tue had a lot to do, but somehow he was the only one who could. Well, I think he still had some help, but he definitely had the most on his plate for this week. Gold star, if we got one.

I have then introduced the idea of leaving information behind for the next students to come. The simplest solution I had for this was to just include some info in the blog post. Everyone has to write the blog post, so might as well talk about things I want to know. Better though - to get in a call with me, so I can ask about details.

What did I want people to tell me? Basically, an overview of the area of Telescope they've been working on. I need to compile a complete overview of Telescope, and I am not familiar with all of its areas. Therefore, I need to collect that information.

Secondly, I want to pass on people's advice. I will definitely share mine, but I'm sure I'm not the only one. Especially, when it's about some other technology someone specializes in.

In the end, we talked about our experience with this course. I announced my gratitude for numerous times I required help with git. People enjoyed their Telescope experience. I know I definitely did.

Setting deadlines

For releases, especially for the final week, it is extremely important to have that line drawn. It has to be simple for people to follow, since during finals nobody has time to read all the updates. I used Teams calendar to set those meetings way ahead of time, since it shows up right away for people. I think my timing for the triage was good, 2pm Wednesday - chill, decent time.

The release, however, wasn't that smooth. I first set it to Thursday 2pm, but as the time came closer to it, it became clear we can't land many things we wanted, specifically the most important ones. My instinct was to give people more time, to make sure there would be nothing else going on. Saturday I thought. However, that idea wasn't popular. People were insistent on Friday, so there it was - Firday 4 pm - 3.0 release. I did most of PR reviews and my own PRs at night between Thursday and Friday. I haven't slept yet, it is currently 7pm of Friday. We are still doing the release. Things are breaking.

Reviews

I have done the best I can with reviews, however, there were many that I couldn't test. I'm not able to do docker things with my version of windows, so I had to ping other people to do it instead. I did review the boring docs though! There were also many technologies I wasn't qualified to review because of my lack of skills.

Labels

We had a lot of PRs. We needed to have reviews ready, so to make it the simplest experience for people, I kept assigning difficulty and area labels onto PRs. I also assigned some to issues, however, I haven't gone through all of them yet. I do plan to.

Annoying people

Especially towards the end I really kept pinging people for updates on things. Some PRs had no instructions. Some were drafts, but were still approved. Many were just not clear. So, those people had to be pinged. At some points, there would be no response, and a decision had to be made based on the unclear information we had.

Release

The group began reviewing and collaborating a few hours before the release meeting time. They really made those PRs just in time, so we proceeded to work on the release with everyone ready and on it. As soon as we started - things started breaking. There was a thing about ngnix, a thing about a conflict of PRs, some files were not properly added, something something staging... The release wasn't formed properly because it produced errors, so you can see THERE IS NO 3.0.0 IN RELEASES!. Something something unit tests. Then SSO was broken. Then... uuh.. The database broke. The final problem was...

Parser is broken! No new posts will be shown on it x_x. So, for new posts you can look at staging. Unfortunate. I have been up since yesterday, others that were in the meeting were pretty exhausted as well. We decided to go back at it tomorrow with fresh brains. Not that I had any clue why things didn't work...

Cleanup

As this is the end of the semester, I want to leave the repository in its best state I can. I also decided to stay around after it's officially over, at least for the near future. I will have a co-op next semester, so I don't know how much time I will have left for Telescope. Either way, I have some things planned to contribute to the general improvement of quality and organization.

Sidebar

Sidebar updates! I haven't always been updating it, I'm sorry. But now I have, with some new things on there. At the very least it needs to be updated at the very end of the semester. It can be left untouched for some time since then.

Priorities

I have done this before as a sheriff. I went through all the issues and sorted them based on how important they are. I want to do a similar thing before I leave, as we have abandoned some unfinished business that was quite important.

Another big part of this process is to figure out what the issues are even about. There is a category for this specifically, named "talk". Means, this issue needs to be discussed, as it is unclear. Why is this important? Because if it's been there for ages and is still unclear to us, it will likely be left untouched by future students as well. Once we do figure out what an unknown thing is about, we can either close it, or improve its issue description. Maybe leave some comments explaining what we found out. So that people of the future don't waste time doing the exact same thing and have a better idea of what's going on.

How do I actually plan to do it? I just want to get into a call with a bunch of people, where we would go over the issues one by one. It would have to be after the semester is over, so perhaps we won't get many people attending. However, hopefully, David will be there, as he is the one mostly creating issues, or at least the one aware of them. I have added all issues to this project board so far, so a starting point has been set.

Themed releases

There has been a proposal this semester, my idea to do "themed releases". The idea was to make weekly meetings and tasks a little more fun and meaningful, as well as add some more structure to our process. I mean, you can just read the issue itself.

As we have experimented with this concept this semester, it brought some results. I don't want to lose this information and approach, so I wanted to make it into some sort of a static guide/advice kind of thing. So, I made it into a wiki page.

I am also unsure why we have some things on wiki pages, some in README's and some on docusaurus. Perhaps we need a better, more structured system for this. Oh, hopefully, I won't forget to address it!

How to be a Project keeper

I have made a draft on this document a long time ago. Now that there's not much time left, I need to make sure it's done. I did some final changes, and now it's complete.

Being a Project keeper is a concept I thought I try to make stick. It's basically what I have been doing, or wanted to do within Telescope. And now that I might have less time on my hands, I don't want these things to get lost and abandoned. I want my work to live on. There are many things that I think just make the developer experience better and should be done. So, I have created this concept to be passed on and, hopefully, picked up by someone next year.

Hacktoberfest issues

Something I know has to be done eventually, by someone, is to prepare Telescope for hacktoberfest. Firstly, labels need to be assigned. "good first issue", or just generally having appropriate area labels to things. Secondly, the issues themselves need to be decent. Clear, understandable by noobs, doable.

As I am planning to do that priority list, as I will be going over every issue out there, I will be as well assigning appropriate labels and improving the issue description. It should work great to improve developer experience for hacktoberfest.

Videos planned

As my tribute to the next generation, I want to leave behind information. And I know .md files are alright, blog posts are okay, but videos - oh, videos are just better. You put them on x2 speed, you get to relax and follow... It's much more common for me to try and read a page and realize I haven't even processed what I just read - it's all blank as compared to watching a video and not remembering anything about it. Sure, you can still blank out on a video, but it's more engaging than text. Either way, I know I can make videos, so I will. They won't be like those tutorial videos though. I can edit things and make them extremely time effective, but I don't want to. There's a reason I do streams and not youtube videos.

Advice

I am not yet sure if I want this to be a single video, or separate ones. I don't want to make it too polished and time-consuming to make, instead, rather a free-form presentation kind of a stream that is divided into parts. Either way, I'll see how it goes.

Being a sheriff

I want to share my advice on being a sheriff. Holding meetings, planning, keeping track of things, communicating. There's a lot to it. You can do a bare minimum, which I will describe how to. Or, you could do all these other things extra, that I want to really share. Being a sheriff was my best experience of this class, so I really have things to tell.

Using projects

I was the one to enforce using projects this semester, and I think they should be used later on as well. They really stop working when nobody maintains them, but projects can really improve your experience. I want to show basic functionality, my own practices and uses for projects, such as: starting a new Project; using it to keep track of a milestone progress; compiling a list of priorities; sorting issues by different types... As the who used projects the most this semester, I think I will be the person to guide others on it.

Project keeper role

This will be somewhat of a video form for the document I made already. It will be a mix of personal experience, advice, demonstration of concrete things and explaining the structure of projects. Hopefully, it inspires someone else to continue on doing this role.

Students to come

Status of Telescope

We are now leaving Telescope behind in this current state. We need to be able to describe what exactly is "this state". What areas are there? What technologies are used? What is the progress on those areas? Where even is the code for this? How do you run it? Where did we leave things off? Basically, all you need to know about Telescope in its current state as a developer that wants to contribute.

Issues seller

This is a special category that I might continue as a series. The idea is to compile issues by a specific type, and present them in an appealing and intriguing manner. So that people actually get excited and want to work on them.

What types would be there?

Compilation of "good first issue"'s, specifically for hacktoberfest;
Issues that can be figured out and handled by a new open source developer. Also for hacktoberfest, but not the very simple ones. Just to show things I for sure know a student can do, which really brings confidence;
Important issues to focus on. As in, what is a priority for Telescope? What is that single bug that ruins the whole thing every time?;
Entry points to new technologies. If you are curious about docker, but you have never dealt with it before, what would be a good issue to start with?
Completely new directions. Things that have not been researched and attempted yet. For example, the Slack bot issue. Or the email notification issue. It's interesting, it's unexplored and it will be completely owned by you!

Experience of previous developers

I am planning to not only compile information from current developers on the current state of Telescope. I also want to record and transmit their advice, their wishes, their views on what Telescope could be, what is lacking, what they want to see completed in the future.

Those are the ideas I have had so far.
I want to have meetings after this is technically officially over, but open source is never over. I've grown attached to Telescope, I want it to do well. My videos will hopefully help others.

Future blog posts?

I have enjoyed blogging, honestly. I might continue doing it, maybe about Telescope, maybe not. After all, it doesn't have to be about Telescope, or open source, or even coding at all. Not many will see it. But maybe that is why I want to write things sometimes. So that only some people get to lay their eyes on it.

GG WP

Nice to meet you.

Alex Romanova — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 23:21:47 +0000

Introduction

Hi. I'm Onix. Or, at least, that's how she named me. I was going to change the name, I just need a better substitute. We have more pressing matters right now... Anyways. Right, where was I... Onix. I live in a body that isn't fully mine. I sometimes get these moments where I have full control, and those moments are great. I would say I'm successful. I am effective. I don't really have problems. I do solve them though.

I like solving things. I like for things to make sense. I create structure from chaos. I make goals, deadlines. I want to be better. I want to create. I want to be impressive. I think in some ways I am already.

I am not sure I exist. It seems that people are made in a way where each one has their own body that only they have. And I, a lot of times, don't. I see my body moving. Doing stupid things. I try to deal with it. I try to communicate, interfere, maybe advise. But I rarely get it fully to myself. When I do - it's like my chains have been lifted. I am suddenly a functional human being that can and will succeed. However, all I do in that state is solving the problems of the other. While I am away, problems start to accumulate. It's as if I'm a janitor to some really spoiled and littering kid..

I try to follow what is going on. When unusual things happen, I try to record them physically. Type them out, make notes. Later I will be able to figure out what happened based on that data. There seems to be a lot of struggle to rely on our own memory. And perhaps mine is better, but I am not always around. And even mine is still... not great, especially at some moments. There are sometimes memory anomalies which I can't access. I am still trying to figure out exactly how those work. However, generally as memory goes, I am aware of what is going on. I know the situation, or at least I figure it out right away. I have access to my life's timeline, so I remember being a kid, or major events. That seems to not be the case for the other person in this body.

I have been told my thoughts are based on fear. That is weird, since I actually don't feel fear. Or, perhaps I feel it differently. I sometimes feel some sort of a barrier, usually in social situations. I don't exactly feel that many things, or at least I do in a very small amount. I don't exactly feel happy, but satisfied. I can feel annoyed. Curious, not specifically excited though. I am more tolerant to pain, or temperature. I am more focused, calm. I care about success. I could tell you more about me later, you probably get enough of an idea already.

In the context of life

Mental health and diagnosis wise

It has been a long journey of mine to figure out exactly what is going on. 5 years now. I have a referral sent to a place where they would make an appointment, but even that will we only reviewed in weeks. It's important for me to define exactly what is affecting me. Once you define it, you can know what is within your control. You know where it's your fault and you can improve, where it's just like a "weather" that will eventually end. Once you know what is going on, you can predict it.

Either way, when I first noticed things happening, I thought it was multiple personalities. I didn't know at the time any details, but it was the only thing that made sense. I have found out more about it, and it did make sense. Dissociative Identity Disorder it's called. It was a long journey that I might tell here later, if anyone is interested. To simplify, I have since started feeling better. Until 2020. That was the second major hit on my mental health, after which I started looking again. I have begun using the mental health resources I could get, since I have found out some were free, or affordable, or covered by college.

First diagnostics

My diagnostics visit of a psychiatrist (technically a second one, but I would actually count it as a first serious visit) left me somewhat confused. He did give me some general results and pointers, but on my mention of DID he simply laughed at me, dismissing the thought completely. On the one hand, a professional is telling me I don't have this diagnosis, who am I to doubt it? On the other, the way he did it was really bizare. He didn't even ask or check why I thought I have it. Either way, I have decided this as enough evidence to think I don't have DID. Besides, I have lived with it for 3 years already and learned to deal with it. Whatever it was, it wasn't the most pressing matter.

Recent suspicion

In the second half of 2021 my mental state has begun going downhill again. I have noticed some weird things happening again that I couldn't explain with any other way. I have been visiting and using mental health resources ever since 2019, trying out different people, getting diagnosed and looking for support. I have gotten a new psychologist at the end of Fall 2021, and she seemed promising (they all do in the beginning). She specializes on trauma specifically, which I exactly sought out. As I described her my experiences, she was the one to bring up the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder. I never mentioned it, I didn't want any confirmation bias. More than that, I have deliberately not been researching the diagnosis to not give my mind tools to lie to myself and skew any results of any kind of diagnostics. This was when I started believing it could be true again. Ever since I have been on my path of getting it diagnosed. It's a long path, it's been months and I still don't even have an appointment scheduled.

Lying to myself and/or others

I didn't want to share anything public about it, or tell people about it, not until I have it officially confirmed. I don't want to be lying to people and/or to myself. However, recently, I have been struggling a lot and I have a strong need for understanding. There are many layers/barriers within me that prevent people to really get what it's like. So, I have decided to at least start with this post. I don't know if I will even publish it in the end, maybe it will forever be a draft. Maybe I will make more.

Is it? Is it not?

This question has been on my mind for a long time now. I keep going back and forth between the two conclusions. I experience something that is so off the charts, so different, so unexplicable with anything else, that I start thinking - it has to be DID. As my memories fade, or as they get completely lost, as I get more mentally stable, those experiences start seeming more and more doubtful. I can't really rely on my memory, or perception. As my data (memory) gets corrupted, my conclusions based on the data also start changing. Maybe I overexxadurated. Maybe I came up with it. Maybe it didn't actually happen. I just want it to be true to be special. To get sympathy. To peek people's interest. That's not something I want to be.

I go back and forth. I'm tired of not knowing, but until I know I can't deceive people. So what am I doing now? Why am I writing this? I suppose I'm just on that swing of the pendulum where I believe there is truth to it. I have not been researching it deliberately, so all I have is just my own experience. I recently had an experience of.. weird things.. I suppose..

Future of these posts

I am still unsure if I will publish this. If you do read it, I suppose I did (incredible logic, I know). In that case.. what would you like to know about? Was this interesting? Are you curious? I have many things to tell, really. I want to tell them on one hand. I'm not sure it will be interesting, or if I will be understood on the other.

Seeing the finish line

Alex Romanova — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 05:05:51 +0000

About us

People can now start doing translations!

I had 2 ideas driving me when I wanted to change this page. Firstly, I wanted to get away from an old concept of a Planet, as we are in 2022 now. People wouldn't understand this old concept, and might as well describe Telescope as what it actually is, instead of what it came from.

Secondly, I wanted to reduce the historical part of About us, however I struggled with it. I wanted the page to be concise, with some elements of history, but not having history be the most important part. I struggled to reduce the amount of historical description, as I was unsure which parts were important for people. I know someone wrote those at some point, therefore thinking they were important. So who would I be to remove them?

It didn't take me much time to edit the page, but it did to make a PR. Something always goes wrong with me and PRs and this time was no different... Either way, it landed, all was done.

Art? SVG?

I have done a vector.. thing... I struggle to call it art, since I associate art with a drawing process, while vector is more about composing things together. Vector images can be exported as SVGs. SVG is a format that consists of HTML and CSS formulas, basically. A single SVG takes a lot of code to just paste in. I have an idea to make some effects to this image, so I have exported it into different layers. Therefore, I had 5 SVGs that I needed to stack on top of each other. However, I have found a problem of putting those SVGs somewhere. They are too big really to just paste into code. So, I'd probably need to put them separately. But I'm not sure how to handle them in terms of react and where to put them in terms of structure. So, I asked for help. Francesco actually gave me instruction on how to do it, which was very helpful. I didn't make a PR in time for alpha, but at this stage I don't have much left to do. I will make a PR shortly. After that initial static image stage, I can start toying around with a parallax effect.

I usually struggle a lot to show it when I make any kind of art. While I am creating, I enter this "critic" mode, which is designed to find and fix errors. Therefore, I don't really see a picture, I just see imperfection. When I am done with my art, usually there is still something wrong with it, but I'm unable to fix it or define it. So I see my art as bad. That is what has been happening with this night sky thing. I needed a couple days of not looking at it to refresh my mind, to be able to see it as a new image and actually figure out if it's good. And now for me it is! Well, at least not bad or awful, like I thought a couple days ago. So I am okay with showing what I got right here and now. It's an Illustrator screenshot, so the sizes are off for the parallax effect to later work. And white space is just the background that won't be there in the final product.

Week of coming back

Alex Romanova — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 00:30:06 +0000

I have been trying to follow everything again lately. Updating general project info, details here and there, meetings. I am glad to have sheriffs this week do a prioritization I wanted to have happened.

I have signed up for two main tasks for this week. I am trying to not expect much, I but also want to contribute. I know both of these things slow down others' development, so people depend on me delivering. Which sounds important, but feels draining. Either way, I want these improvements to happen, and I will try my best to do them.

About us preparation

There is an issue planned to translate the About us page into different languages. Before we can translate it though, we need a final version of the english languaged About us page. I wanted to have some corrections made, since the description of Telescope as it is right now seems outdated and unclear. We cling to the old concept of a Planet, which is true, but is no longer supported. Might as well not define ourselves with it. I still want the Planet stuff to be there as part of history, but the main part has to be rewritten. I plan have a PR ready tomorrow. I have some ideas put in currently, but my brain is too dumb to mold it into a comprehensive and coherent explanation right now.

Docusaurus landing page CSS tricks

I had an idea for a long time I wanted to explore. I wanted to play around with CSS animations, but I needed a playground. That playground came to be the new Docusaurus website that conveniently needs a landing page. I want to explore what I can do in terms of CSS animations. I have an outline of an SVG I want to make and the movement of a telescope that would follow a cursor. I don't know how difficult it is to do, but I suppose I will find out. Either way, people need a landing page and if I don't make a great one, I will at least end up making some... one.

Just these two. I look at this all, compare to my previous progress and it makes me sad. And even with these "only two" tasks, I can see how I might struggle to do even that. Hopefully, my state of being able to complete things will continue for a long enough time to make some kind of meaningful progress. There's not that much time left. I want to leave something behind. Not just something, a lot, actually.

Major planning | Ukraine

Alex Romanova — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 23:31:03 +0000

This week was going to be my productive week. It started strong, with some heavy planning and meetings. But then.. Russia attacked. I have not been doing much work on the issues I was assigned to. Sorry. I am trying to do some right now, not sure how much I will get done.

Planning meeting

This week's meeting had a goal of getting up to speed. Here's the plannning project updated.
Here is what was raised during the meeting:

Themes

The current theme for this week is to figure out where you are, figure out what you want to do. Next week, being the study week - focus on research. If you have any new ideas, share them now, the window for new things is closing. After that - polishing. That means bugs, testing, docs, guides.

There was something new I introduced - thinking about the next generation. That involves having proper issue descriptions. Good first issue labels. For next year - leaving behind guides, docs, videos even. What you have been doing this semester - tell it to them, they will be as lost as you were once. This theme is not our current focus, but soon it will be. I want people to be aware of this direction first and not have it as a completely new concept when we will need to act on it.

Updates

I asked people what areas have they worked on so far and what areas they are interested to work on next? Turns out, many are interested to get into docker and supabase. Including me. If I never asked that of everyone, we wouldn't even know there was such interest. Based on that information, the focus of upcoming issues will be in docker and supabase. I also thought we should make a meeting on it.

I was worried the meeting will not take enough time and we will have to do triage things, but we never even gotten to that. People had things to discuss, which is great.

Triage

Before the triage we, sheriffs, met and sorted all the issues we had so far. This is the middle point of our semester, we need to realize where we are at and decide where we are heading. We can't really plan for 2.8 release, if we don't yet know what we want to get done for 3.0 release. We should go from largest to smallest deadlines to really have an idea of our priorities.

Priorities

We used this project. We had 4 priority levels:

Must complete. We want this done before we leave this class.
Better complete. Not a must, but is still important.
Optional. Sounds cool, not a priority, if we are bored or have time - do this.
Negligible. Least priority. Get to this after everything else is done.

There have also been made 2 unknown categories:

Talk. Need to ask about the issue during the meeting, since we don't understand enough about it.
Update. Unknown if the issue is still relevant. Need to hear from the creator in the issue comments.

We are not sure on how well we judged the issues, but at least it now gave an idea of what to do next. I don't know if this is something other sheriffs will do after us.

The meeting went in the order of priority with some talks mixed in. I did not pay attention as much as I wanted to, at this point war just started that night and I haven't slept yet as I was monitoring the situation. Generally, I think it went well.

On communication

There is something I want developers of Telescope to do better. Communication. It is part of my role here, I connect the channels, I summarise the information, I ask the questions. I did that during our meeting - "what do you do?" And they answer. But they only tell if I ask. I wish people shared more on their own. Issue comments, slack, discussions, making meetings themselves even. We should be aware of what others are doing.

Week of research

Next week, study week I declared as a week of research. Having no deadlines due that time, it is both a lenient enough task to have time to relax, and is also a unique direction to pursue, when else will be get a week without any classes? I personally will research Slack bot stuff, my Docker issue and automation stuff. Technically study week has no sheriffs, but I want to continue being one for that time too.

I want to make a stream with people to have them talk about Telescope. And to stream my docker issue, since people are interested in that. I'm not sure how much I will get done.

Ukraine

This is not related to coding.

Ever since it started happening, all I have been doing is refreshing the map, searching for news and updates, talking about it, thinking about it, listening about it, dreaming about it. I am Ukrainian. All my family is in Ukraine. I am trying to do assignments, and sometimes I end up doing something, like writing this post.

This is where my family lives. Kiev, Obolon'. Both apartments in there. In one lives my mother, in the other - grandma and aunt.

Now this is the most dangerous area in Kiev. Kiev is the capital. I see videos of tanks driving there. I know these surroundings. Oh look, here's a tank. Here's another. (Person in the car survived) All of this right there, right where they live.

Right outside of Kiev to the north - is the front line.

This is where my classmate has her house. I went to her... 9th? birthday party there. And it's where my friends of family live. I would come there in summer, I remember I tried my first energy drink there. Who knows how fucked it all is now - they gotten past it to my district...

Here's Chornobyl. The power plant that blew up and spread radiation all over europe at some point. (If you're curious, watch HBO's Chernobyl, it's pretty good.). ~80km North from where I lived.

Now there are crazy high readings of radiation, since there was a fight and apparently something was hit that shouldn't have been hit.

(source)

My family didn't want to leave. Reminded me of this:

Mom decided to leave, but didn't know where.
After a day of nothing I have finally gotten an update from them. She convinced them to leave, just as the fight started. Took them 6 hours to drive 140 km. They are now in a small town away from the front line. Mom is definitely for leaving the country, not sure about others.

Civilians are open to go and get armed to fight. A guy I know tried to get armed today, and couldn't. The line was too big - they didn't get to him. I think I would fight too if I lived there. My family would probably be against that decision. All my Ukrainian friends are out of the country, thankfully. Rumors keep spreading that this night will be the time when they storm Kiev. I don't know how true that is, I guess we'll see.

Before this started, people on both sides - Russia, Ukraine thought it was all posturing. No war is gonna happen, cmon... Everyone was shocked. I fear for my friends in Russia. They might lose contact because of the government. Could do something with internet like they have in China. Economy has tanked over there. Protests are happening in Russia, but if you know how those usually go... well, not great. I don't know if it will be enough people to not just get everyone jailed in the end. Like it usually happens.

Sources

Here is what I keep checking. A live webcam compication. Not specifically this one, just search "ukraine live webcam" in live videos. I keep hearing alarm go off in Kiev and sounds of explosions from time to time there.
This map is great. You might need to keep refreshing to make it work, it is pretty overloaded these days.
I keep reading a telegram chat on my inline skating group I used to skate with, they share where they hear explosions, what's the situation like.

As I keep refreshing the map, I keep seeing news about regions that I recognize. Oh, Odessa, we went for a Linkin Park concert there. Oh, we went for a holiday to Herson and I got sick there. Oh, a dude I played this Spore roleplay game is from Chernigiv. Many like these. I wouldn't say I'm very patriotic. And yet I care enough to have this be my main activity ever since it started. I don't know what I expect to see. Nukes? EU support? Ukraine captured? President killed?

I don't have anger towards people that don't care. It is not their country. I enjoy the memes and jokes, jokes are meant to be funny. I don't hate Russian people - they are just like us, but do they have a country to run to?

Refreshing the page doesn't do anything. Should I care less? Should I care more?
I don't know. This never happened to me before. Actual war. I don't know.

2.7 - 83 issues closed

Alex Romanova — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 01:16:12 +0000

2.7 Update stream

Starting with the juiciest, the stream on what we've done for this release.

I later attempted to take on the issue live, but I did forget I didn't get any instruction on the matter, but I was supposed to get it before I really can contribute :D I will have to schedule a meeting asking for help on this later. So, I guess not conquering it today!

At least you can watch me try to take on something I clearly can't, lol. I was even maybe getting somewhere...? Not sure if I was. But it felt that way. Sometimes.

Slack bot beginnings

As I have started on this issue, I have played around making a slack bot. There seems to be a lot of issues on just making the thing work, their auth tokens and permissions are very diverse, I definitely got lost in those.

I have also tried to do this in Go, because I always would try to do something in Go given the opportinity, but the Go Slack API was using the outdated auth system, there was simply no documentation to follow at all. I see this in my second attempt at using Go, having no tools to use, or no instruction to follow. Oh well, maybe the next project...

Finalizing Projects

Projects now all follow the same description structure and may not be all filled in, but are consistent with their data. I have not had a chance to fix my mistakes with the templates yet, but it is a technical small housekeeping part, I will get to it eventually, I will not close the main issue until I do.

Learning about Supabase

We have had a meeting this week about Supabase and I had a chance to ask many questions I needed to complete documentation and to understand what it is myself. I go over it on my stream in more detail, but I have also started a scrap page for the documentation file on the wiki.

Using wiki to make docs

By the way, this is the first time we use Wiki to start docs. Here's why. Docs, especially in the beginning need a lot of editing, which is also collaborative work. If we were to use the regular system, we'd have to get many PRs approved for stupidest of changes and would have to wait for reviews every time. It just seems more handy to start in Wiki, and hopefully that doesn't make people forget it exists easier.

How does Auth work?

In the meeting we have also been explained some intricacies on authentication for Telescope, and apparently it's not straight forward. It's actually very complicated and has to be explained every time. Well, it doesn't have to be. Since I have started to make a doc on it, so that we don't need to repeat the same informaiton like a legend. Hopefully, again, people work on this and we have something to refer to.

Labels for PR reviews

Another small change some might notice is a new label group for PRs:

There was an issue at some point having many PRs stacked up, and some of which containing minimal changes, but having to be treated the same way as the more complex PRs. I feel like having a difficulty would encourage reviewers to even try to take it on themselves. I'm not sure if this will get used, it is an experimental feature. There might be a need for the PR template to mention to ensure a faster review and approval, please add a difficulty label to your PR. And describing how to really judge a difficulty of a PR. I judge it by 2 factors: novelty and amount.

Novelty would play a big role if it is about working with a completely new technology, and it would require for the reviewer to also learn that technology to be able to review. And, well, amount. Just files changes (unlesss those are generated).

Tough week

I have planned to complete more things than I have in the end this week. The doom that I expected to arrive on schedule has been delayed, but certainly happened this week. Instead of being it a background surrounding the ~4 weeks, it instead was a wave that hit me for a couple of days. Oh well, I am happy I was able to do the stream at last. And write this post, even if late.

Telescope stream

Alex Romanova — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 04:49:46 +0000

Chill

This was a chill week for me. Last week was me sheriffing and even though I didn't feel like I was doing much, I got pretty tired. I was planning to get into Docker this week, and I did somewhat. I learned its basics and lurked around Telescope's docker files. I generally understood what's up. I also wanted to contribute to a docker related issue, but that didn't happen this week.

I generally stayed in the loop of the issues and PRs this week, so it wasn't that I completely didn't do anything. Just wasn't much to show for.

Slack bot?

I did some research on this old and cool issue. I left a comment on it. Basically what's missing is to figure out how to catch the errors that happen during github builds, so that I later can send that information to the Slack bot. I'm not sure myself where to find that information, I might need to ask people for it.

Projects

So remember me working on projects? Well, I'm happy to announce it's close to being done. Or, at least, all the work that's left to do is defined, I clearly know what's left to be done. And it's just monotonous documentation, it's not too bad, once it's done it will look nice.

There's a problem I found out about recently. So there's this button I didn't see before, or just haven't clicked...

So you know what it does? Well here's what it does.

Yes. The thing I made a whole structure for...

You know.. with parent issues... and... stuff......sigh....

So yes. This makes things better visually, but I have to restructure some stuff I already did. In any case, now I know and now the path to complete it is clear and defined.

Stream

Yes! I finally streamed about Telescope. I went through what Telescope is, through current projects and I did my first 2 code reviews! One on unit tests for search, the other on some Docasaurus formatting improvements. It's now definitely less scary to do them. I now know how to do those and have my experience.

There's also this drawing I did in the first hour or so of the stream, just if you're curious.

I initially thought I'd draw a telescope, cause, well, that's the main part of the stream... but I figured out telescopes, even big ones, are boring. So I just switched to a cosmic theme, and, of course drew a dragon cause that's what I do.

Next week stream

So for the next stream I want to introduce a category which would overview the weekly changes, so that people have an easy way to stay updated without having to read.

I also want to take on an issue, hopefully a docker one. And perhaps get some help on it from another developer that knows more about the topic. They will have a bit where they would explain in general about the topic, so that people who aren't aware of it can get introduced to the area. Later they might just be my helping hand as I try to figure out the issue.

I'm not sure if I want to do the last part exactly, might be annoying for both parties to do :D . In any case, the guest person should have a good mic and be able to talk well, just for the sake of the stream quality.

Sheriff week

Alex Romanova — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:34:22 +0000

A sheriff on top of things

Being sheriff is a great way to figure out where the project is going. I found out what people are working on, what has been implemented, what new technology is getting integrated.

I enjoyed the most having people explain what they are working on and to share it with the team. Instead of reading the comments and trying to figure out the code and documentation, having an actual person explaining is a big difference.

Presenting, planning, communication

The most time I spent was on planning the meetings. Perhaps I spent too much time on that even. However, my main task being to be on top of projects, and being aware of all the subtasks we have in Telescope - it does sound similar to what a sheriff does. It helped to catch me up to speed with the whole project. Honestly, after this experience I find that we have surprisingly little new projects left to document. Sure, the ones I defined already need details and structure to them, but except those details... I really struggled to find any more new directions. Most that's left is the documentation for the older stuff.

Project for management

For the planning meeting on Tuesday I used a Project system to organize the issues I want to go through. It turned out to be a great tool! I'm not sure how well it will stick with next coming sheriffs, but at the very least to me it proved to be extremely helpful.

I first grouped issues that I didn't know a status of. Meaning, I didn't know if the work was being done, if it will be completed in time for 2.6 release, or maybe the creator dropped out. Therefore, they needed to be addressed, to figure out if the deadline works out, or they need more time.

As the time went on, we went through PRs. It was mostly Anayoliy who did the reviews. I wish I done more, since that would help me learn the code. In any case, at the very least I was aware of the PRs status and direction, even if not of the code itself.

After the planned PRs and issues were sorted out, during Triage we had a bunch of issues under 2.7 already there. We went through them to see what they are about, if people needed help and if it will be done for 2.7.

Deadlines

Something about management I learned this week is how to set and stick to deadlines. Personally I would rather people do their work if they can, unrelated to dates as much. I'm not a big fan of schedules myself. However, for the project it was important to have those lines drawn somewhere, and if you make one, you gotta stick to it. It might suck having to rush your work for a deadline, but it sucks more to have the deadline shift and be fluid.
You didn't make it to 2.6? You didn't make it.

Interesting issues

I went through each issue to see if I could find anything interesting. And that's exactly what I meant. Something new, refreshing, unusual. I found three. I added them to the project, but might as well showcase them here:

1366 - Slack integrations for failed or successful builds.

You know those terrible moments when master breaks? You'd expect there to be an alarm with people panicking and running to fix the thing ASAP. But that doesn't happen, it's just a small red x near the commit hash... The issue would do exactly that - the alarm, since people check Slack and people can panic on Slack. If you panic on GitHub, nobody will know.

1608 - Improve Accessibility Standards.

Why is accessibility interesting? Because it's a new concept. It's something that will help to learn the underlying code and will bring some positive changes at the same time. It brings that professionalism feel to the whole project and includes a bunch of steps and new technologies. Maybe the idea itself isnt' as exciting, but the process of learning and integrating it might be.

2225 - Support email notifications to users.

This is a completely new direction to learn and figure out. Having dealt with an email API before myself, it's not specifically that difficult. But there's a lot to be done there potentially, all the ways we could customize those emails and make them look cool.

A lacking area

Something I also noticed amongst those issues is how we have a bunch of tests to write. Look how many issues there are!. Sure, not overwhelmingly a lot, but I haven't seen any specialists on testing so far. It's definitely a potential area to focus on.

Notes

After the Triage I went through the recording and put everything that was talked about in the text form. I find this both a useful and a useless task. It is useful to have a record of what has been done. It is useful for those who can't attend a meeting. However, most that was done during a triage was just "is this good? - Yes. - Ok cool". Not a lot of fresh or useful infromation.

Streams?

That made me think of making a better format, some sort of a recap. Having a new format to present and overview what's been done... yea, that would be cool. I was going to have a stream about Telescope today. However, I expected to have more energy. So, not today. Maybe on weedends?

My idea is to go over what Telescope is, to overview the current projects and to go deep into just one of them. That might include an interview with a person who knows about that topic the most. Might also include fixing an issue myself on stream. I wanted to start with Satellite, but now I see we don't have many issues left there. I also know some people don't have good mics, or even if they are able to solve issues, they might still not be able to talk about them. Those are some things I'd have to figure out as I go. In any case, I will announce the stream and my plans once I have them all set.

Docs here and there

This week I didn't have much time to work on actual issues. Some work in the wiki, some labels, some meetings, project infromation here an there.. Nothing major though.

The only concrete thing - I added a template for a project.
The whole idea is to have a single system of documentation that makes sure we cover everything that is needed to know about a project. For example, I introduced an idea of teams. Commonly when you want to get into a new topic, you need someone to introduce it to you and help you out in the beginning. Having a list of people that are familiar with the topic helps with that question of "who do I ask?".

Another problem this solves is delegating new tasks to people. Now that we know people's specialty, we'd want to route similar issues to them.

A main role

As I work on Telescope, I find myself enjoying maintaining the little things. I kind of wish I had a distinct role of planning for the whole time, not just the week of being a sheriff. To be fair tho, I am already going into that role. Streams for updates, projects, ideas... yea, sounds close enough. I just don't yet have a clear definition of what it is that I do. I keep having a feeling that I'm doing nothing, and at the same time that I'm doing a lot. I still haven't written any substantial code. Which worries me.. Every time I get interested in a topic, I'm unsure if the area I want to explore is even interesting or will be good to specialize in. As I proceed with those streams, hopefully I'll find out. My current target is to start with a single microservice.

Structure

Alex Romanova — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 07:40:56 +0000

What I did: a lot of structure

I have mostly been discussing, learning, formatting and structuring things this week. Perhaps I don't produce that much code, but I definitely do some work.

The sidebar

Look at this mess.

This is the sidebar now.

I didn't know at first, if it was even something I could fix.
Issue

This took me some reasearch on how wiki pages work, I have found an app that would generate pages for you, however I decided to have a full control over them and make a custom sidebar. It was one of those things that annoyed me every time I'd look at it. Not anymore!

Projects

This is the largest one. I started with a discussion.

I first went over the old overview file and revisited the sections described. Now at least I have (maybe an outdated, but) structure. I need to check each one to see for myself what it does. As I discover them, I should leave behind a doc that would summarize what I learned. In the end I should have a complete picture with all the components linked and clear.
I then looked at the Projects that existed. You don't see much in here now, because I removed most of them. Having to look at how they were used, I saw a flaw in the structure. That made me reconsider what should a Project even be.
With Jerry's help, I could outline a concept of a Project. As I figured that out, I began removing the old Projects, as they no longer would fit within that definition. I still struggle to figure out if I should make a project for an idea, or it should be left as an issue. Hopefully, as I discover more areas that part will become clearer to me.
I was curious to see what a Project Beta is. After getting permission to play around, I figured out it has all the functionality of old projects, but along with new extra features. That left no reason to not switch for beta, since we are redoing the projects and we are not losing anything by switching towards the new realm.
I assigned some ideas as Projects that were already discussed as such. I have yet to find many more Projects to add and organize.
Project structure. This was something I found lacking in the previous approach. There should be a single page that would describe the project and have links to all the resources you will need to get involved. That page has to he the top left page in the project and has to always include specific data. I came up with a single structure, that works like a lifecycle. First, a project is an idea that is a discussion. Then it becomes an adult and is an issue that keeps track of other smaller parts of the project and has all the documentation needed later. I call that a parent issue. In the end, as the Project gets completed, it retires and the page becomes a part of documentation. Since during its life it was collecting all the useful data, we don't need to gather much information when it retires, we just need to format it well.

Issue templates

In a discussion, Jerry suggested something I didn't think to include before, but realized we actually need. He later made an issue that I completed. I ended up making two templates, one for a new project, another for a documentation task. Aaaaaaaaaand that broke master.

How I broke master.

This week was my time to break master... I had my turn. I did it with.... you wouldn't believe it.. .md files! Look, I had to fix it too. Basically what happened is that I added the files through GitHub, without linting or making a PR. Prettier checks did not like my .md files. There was a short panic on slack, thankfully I didn't go to sleep yet (magically). Yes, you could say I did a PR this week technically. Maybe if I didn't mention I caused it in the first place, it might even look good.

Mobile PR

There was this old issue and a PR we got assigned as the new Front end team! As we found out, the solution I came up with wasn't as easy to implement, so I decided we complete the easier part and make another issue for the more difficult part. The PR is now there, so we should be done with the task.

What I also found out is that I don't actually want to be in the front end team, since it's mostly React...

Architecture overview

As I am discovering Telescope's components, following the old doc I will be adding that information into an overview of my own. It is work in progress, but I will make it clean and informational. Something like this so far:

Project keeper

It is clear that projects will not be maintained unless someone maintains them. I decided to make up a specific role for the students to come, so that there is more chances to have it filled. I have drafted a page about it. I will work on adding information to it as I come back to re-evaluate. It should be a solid doc towards the end of semester so that someone could pick up the role after me.

Themed releases

This is an idea I had which is more about how we work on releases as students, rather than Telescope itself. To keep it short, each week will have a theme that would push people to prioritize it, rather than having each release be equal and same.

Actual docs

I have been assigned to make many docs for many new concepts. My task for the weeks to come will be to bug people to explain me how to use their things, what those are and where they are located. Then just make a doc about it. Cool.

Docs service?

Since now there are many docs to be made, this idea was born, to give those docs a better place to live. On Telescope. It wouldn't have to change much, since MDX is something that uses .md files. So the old files we have already will work. I like what this project solves, I like how it will improve developer experience of generations to come.

Twitch in Telescope!

I was assigned this as the one streamer that dared to announce I am one during the meeting. It is a reasearch task about a topic I am somewhat familiar with. However, I'm not that sure how I will deal with the whole... react... part of Telescope. At the very least I could find out what steps need to happen for someone to make it work.

A lot, but a little

It was a weird week. I felt like I didn't do enough, but at the same time I did a lot of small things all around the project. I definitely didn't do enough code and barely know how to do PRs. I will fix that tomorrow, as I'll get in a call for someone to explain me the process. I will need to know those things, like reviewing and testing someone's PRs next week.

Oh, right, did I mention? I'm the next Sheriff. I am both excited and terrified. My performance in meetings will depend on how I will feel that day, which doesn't sound reliable at all. However, it has a potential of being awesome as well. We'll see!