Telescope
Tags: opensource
Published: 2022-01-14 17:44:15

# A single project #
Oh man, do I love the idea of not having to search for some new application to work on. Going through tons of poorly documented, too easy or too difficult issues was not a great time. Besides, it was really tough to have no direction or suggestions from others. Sometimes there was, but in cruicial times I didn't find any. Now, for the next couple months my focus will be on a single project - [Telescope](https://github.com/Seneca-CDOT/telescope).

Not only it's a single project, but I am now in a community. Now that is a place where I belong - creating discussions, asking things and answering questions, perhaps befriending new people.. Aww yeah. I am actually excited for it. 

The project is being worked on by people of my level. Other students who may or may not be better coders, but at least not by a huge gap. Working on other projects always felt intimidating and made asking for help harder.

I am actually excited to contribute to this. Having enough time to see around the project, play with some things and see its different ares is a less stressful environment this time. 

## What interests me ##

There are three things I want to note. 

1. Firstly, in our first triage meeting I had a new idea right away. That idea isn't that simple either. It would need a team to develop and is a new.. "thing". Not just an extra function. 
More on that later.

2. Secondly, technology-wise I know I am always down for Go. Buuuut... it's not really around in this project. I was suggested to look at Docker instead. I still have no clue what it actually is. Well, I kinda do - it's a container that allows you to run things in different environments. And it has a whale as a logo. I haven't made any code for it though. 
Another thing I could always do is front end - I am not new to design and it seems that people are not as excited about it, so I might need to fill the role. 
There was also something that I could see myself learning - cloud hosting. I did research it at some point for a project and I saw how it works.. Somewhat. I don't remember much. But I do remember it being not as scary.

3. Finally, I want to do the boring quality of life thing that nobody wants to do - documentation. Anything that just improves readability, makes the whole searching for a task process faster - I want to make better. I like putting things in order. I like having them lined up. I don't mind it being boring. As opposed to being completely alone and lost developing a new feature - I find it comforting. But yea, sure, it's also boring. (unless it has color to it, like let's say assigning labels to things - that's already more fun just because labels have color. Interesting how that works.)

## The new function ##

~~I literally have an issue all ready to be posted right now. I have formatting, screenshots and all that cool stuff there. However, I am scared to. As usual. What if I missed something? What if there's an obvious mistake I overlooked? What if all that effort is really in vain? See, it wouldn't bother me as much to put in the effort but never show anyone I have put the effort and have it never see the light of day. As opposed to posting it and having people say "well, that's awkward, but you just wasted a whole day on something we don't need".~~

*Aaaaaanyways.* Having it all ready in that issue, I don't want to write the same thing twice. So I will make a quick summary of it and link you to the actual issue once I post it.

The idea is to have a visual representation of the Telescope project. It would show how much of the project is in different areas like `front end`, `back end`, `documentation` etc... It would connect concrete issues, people, PRs, and labes to that visualisation so you can navigate there right away. It should be a good page to look at whenever you are looking for a task to do, or wondering what is the state of the project.

A cool thing is that it would get all data from GitHub, we will just be showing the same things in a better way. 

### [The issue with all the details!](https://github.com/Seneca-CDOT/telescope/issues/2655) ###

### The community ###
I am very excited to actually talk and collab with people. We now have a "front end team" which I belong in! (Well, I made that name up, but maybe it will become a thing. Just continue repeating it till people believe it's a thing.) I will immidiately need someone's help in remembering how to rebase a branch. So that's fun, asking for help, yaay... After that point though it should become easier to communicate. The issue I was assigned to seems easy.

I am somewhat worried about the time when I will be assigned to be a sheriff. Having no sleep schedule might not work that well with answering people's questions right away. Perhaps I could work night shifts? 

I'm sure my enthusiasm will slow down once I get stuck with an actual problem. That always happens. Until then - LET'S GOOO