Hi, I'm Harshil, currently in my final year of the Computer Programming and Analysis program at Seneca College. I'm just starting out with contributing to large open-source projects and am excited to begin a series of blogs to document my journey. I've completed two co-op terms as a Systems Developer at the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), where I gained experience working with Azure Cloud and earned an Azure Development (AZ204) certification.
Why Open Source?
I first heard the term 'open source' a year ago when I read a LinkedIn post by a friend about his contribution to an open-source project. Inspired by his post, I immediately started searching for a project I could contribute to. I found some interesting projects and looked at a few issues, but after trying for two hours, I gave up because the codebase was too large, and I didn't have the patience at the time.
I've always been curious about how things work 🤔, which has led me to explore many areas of computer science, but I am particularly drawn to Cloud Computing ☁️. This is because, before the advent of cloud technology, we were responsible for everything—from developing applications to setting up servers and managing networking. With the cloud, however, you can leverage various platform-as-a-service offerings, like Azure Logic Apps or Azure Functions ⚙️, to run your code, allowing you to focus primarily on the application and data. And that's why I am planning to contribute to some cloud open-source projects
OSD600 is an excellent opportunity for me to finally get to know more about open-source, and start contributing to real-world projects. What excites me most about open source is the chance to learn from others, especially those with more experience in areas I'm not as familiar with. It's an opportunity to be part of a community that loves building useful tools and solutions. That's what makes open source special—you're not just coding alone; you're working with people worldwide who share the same passion.
Getting started
For this blog post, we were asked to get started in the world of open source and explore top trending GitHub repos. I began by looking through different repositories, trying to find something related to Cloud, but nothing caught my interest. Then, I started browsing more broadly and came across sherlock-project/sherlock, which instantly grabbed my attention. Here's my fork 🍴: https://github.com/hpatel292-seneca/sherlock.
The Sherlock Project is an open-source tool that helps you find usernames across different social media platforms and websites. Just enter a username, and Sherlock will search through hundreds of sites to see if that username is already taken or still available. It's useful for people who want to check if their desired username is free or for those doing online investigations.
Sherlock works by scanning websites to see if a profile with the given username exists. It sends requests to these sites, similar to how you would manually check each one. If it finds a match, it shows you the link to that profile, making it easy to visit the site directly. Sherlock supports many websites, including social media, forums, and other online services, making it a handy tool for finding usernames all over the internet 🌐.
Conclusion
That was it for my first blog post. Thanks for reading.
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