Hello dear reader,
I know you might be thinking that the title is a bit too dramatic, but what happened between today and the previous time I wrote is also similarly crazy 😂
So, firstly I found an amazing issue on GitLab for GNOME, but as you might know, life is never a straight line for anyone 🥲 which obviously applies to me too. So I searched the web and also ChatGPT to look for ways to come up with the solution, it was difficult not because I was very new to GJS (yes, GNOME has its own version of JavaScript just to render things on your PC 🫠). So I first saw a bit of GJS documentation and it did not take me longer than an hour to realize the docs were almost useless, yeah I said it literally out loud when I was seeing the docs.
The docs had the implementation part but that was not at all what I needed. So I turned to ChatGPT and it had performance issues if I put it in very simple words 😅. So I asked it to teach me GJS (which I do for almost all languages and frameworks whose docs overwhelm me, as a matter of fact, I learnt NextJS, Flutter and NodeJS from ChatGPT but polished it with docs and personal projects) and then it started listing facts about GJS, I knew learning from ChatGPT is a very iterative process of me explaining what I want and what I understood and hope it just understands but this time ChatGPT decided to take a different route. It first told me the pros and cons of GJS, then why GNOME uses GJS, what I should do about it and a mixture of multiple “sorry” and “I apologise” messages that ChatGPT generally gives when either its training data is insufficient or my context is insufficient which is obvious, you cannot force a LLM to learn something not in its training data 😅 (though my friends have totally different arguments ready for this 😂).
So then I started looking for help online again but using google search — “How does GJS start something“, “How do I write something in GJS“, “How to make my first app in GNOME Builder“, “What does GJS use in GNOME Builder“ and tons of similar questions of which none helped 😂 expectedly.
So I just did what I could the best, I waited for 2 days for the reply of the comment I put in the issue. Yeah that was the only thing I could do then… 😅
And guess what, I did not get a reply and hence I had to put in another message saying please read the first one 🙂, I mean come on that issue got a like after I put the comment, but not a reply 😓
If someone wants to view the full issue, here it is: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-characters/-/issues/56
Finding this issue was not so easy and finding the actual maintainers to tag was another battle in itself! But even after this, I’m waiting — and learning patience. Once I get clarity from maintainers, I’ll either move forward with this issue or pivot again.
Also, I just started writing on the platform called Medium because a lot of my friends recommended me for a better reach, so just check it out if you do have time, not major difference in feelings just the text 😂
So these are the two other places I have my series going on, if you do have sometime and want to help me just visit these blogs too but you've already helped me a ton by reaching till the end
Hashnode: https://contributing-to-ubuntu.hashnode.dev/day-xyz-when-i-found-the-real-open-source
Medium: https://medium.com/@meetgandhi13062005/contributing-to-ubuntu-day-xyz-when-i-found-the-real-open-source-56b3913dca4b
That’s open source, I guess 🙂
Credits: Tenor
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