Articles

A return to writing

Originally, I began my portfolio / blog site back in 2021 towards the beginning of my career. However, I only ever attempted to write a few times, as I was never really been one to put content out in the open. As I continue to grow in my career, I have began to realize how important it is to write things down. Not just ones thoughts, but also learn how to explain things clearly.

Obtaining my first certification

My first professional certification I had never really thought about getting a professional certification, until it was highly encouraged by upper management at my current company. At first I thought it would be a relatively easy thing to achieve, but after learning more about it, I became uncertain. The certification I was going for was the AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate, and to achieve this, it required passing an exam consisting of 65 questions and scoring 720 or higher out of 1000.

Contributing to Open Source

Contributing to Open Source I want to start this off by saying that it is hard to contribute to open source projects, at least for me. Contributing has always seemed kind of illusive, but also something that I have wanted to do for a while. The most difficult part for me (I think) is how I might seem to others, whenever I be create an issue, submit a pull request, or even just comment on a project.

Contributing to Open Source

Planted September 20, 2021

Contributing to Open Source

I want to start this off by saying that it is hard to contribute to open source projects, at least for me. Contributing has always seemed kind of illusive, but also something that I have wanted to do for a while. The most difficult part for me (I think) is how I might seem to others, whenever I be create an issue, submit a pull request, or even just comment on a project.

Taking the leap

As I began learning the Rust programming language, I thought it would be best to improve/prove some of what I had learned by contributing to a project. It was odd at first, getting to know the names of some contributors, figuring what would be good for a new contributor to work on, and walking through the codebase itself, but after a couple of days, I decided to create an issue and submit a pull request to add a new feature. Even though I was self conscious with putting myself out there, I received some very helpful and kind feedback, which was all I needed to improve my confidence and continue down this path.

Expanding my efforts

Now that I had made a few contributions (though small) I wanted to expand into other related projects. And now I find myself sort of in this community of developers who like to build tools and libraries around data. I started with delta-rs and find myself moving towards the datafusion project, which has really inspired me to learn more about query engines, and data distributed processing (ballista).

Finding passion

Beginning with open source has swayed my passions from just being a developer for a job to also being a developer as a hobby. I have a new found passion to build new things, learn new technologies, and work with lots of smart people.