Release 0.4 Part 3: Not the ending I was anticipating, but one I can accept
Tags: opensource
Published: 2020-12-12 04:33:17

Could've been better, but this PR is both a learning experience, and an opportunity to learn and do better for myself. 

I was very humbled by the opportunity to participate in the transition to NextJS from Gatsby. It's still a work in progress. Many of the components required other components, which in turn also used features that would have to be either changed or removed. For example, telescope uses GraphQL to make their site queries to grab meta data that I would need for the components I was working on such as the telescope URL in order to make an API request to grab the contributors to put in the footer. I'm aware of Apollo-GraphQL, which has high integration with Next, but I'm not too sure if telescope is going to use it so I decided against it.

I finally made my PR, which you can find [here](https://github.com/Seneca-CDOT/telescope/pull/1526). It's missing some stuff and I have some small errors that I have to iron out, but I felt that what I had was decent enough to make the PR. I figured that I could add some commits as I continue to work on fixing this issue.

This semester was a wild rollar-coaster. I'll talk about this more in a final blog post. Whether it'll be my last one is up for debate. This past Monday was early enrollment and I was able to successfully enroll in the DPS911 follow up course. With the transition to Next well under way, I wouldn't be too surprised if that was the main focus of the follow up open source project class. Now, I may have killed myself by taking 7 classes in the winter semester along with the mandatory WTP200 work term prep class, but there were too many decent pro options that I really did not want to pass up. Compared to Fall and Summer, the Winter semester has a much better and diverse option of pro options, which includes DPS911. This would also be the only chance I'd get to do DPS911 so I figured that I'd give it a go and hopefully see if I can improve beyond what I was able to accomplish here in DPS909. 

As for this release, it's not what I hoped but it's a result I can accept, because I gave it my best effort. I've had to read up alot of documentation on both typescript and next, something that I disliked alot, but something I knew I'd have to do eventually given the new technology being used. Unlike the last release, where nothing I did ended up working, I felt like the work I did lead to something. Now, it's not perfect, but nothing is perfect in this world, and that's ok. I messaged David about my release 0.3 and what I could do to possibly do better in release 0.4 and when I mentioned that I was afraid about trying the next port, he said this:

![David's message](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/oaxqa2ksypc2j11esvgm.png)

This has been my motivation and thought process all throughout this final release. Continue to learn and always strive to improve. You can never attain success without failing and making mistakes. That's why no matter what the end result may be, I can say that I tried my best and that I gave it 100% effort.

“I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.”
― Abraham Lincoln

This quote pretty much summarized my opinions about our professor, David Humphrey, who is in my opinion, the best professor I've had in post-secondary education, period. I'm passionate about web development, I've made some practice projects in React and Vue to continue honing my skills, but you can only get better when you have a goal and someone to help push you to reach that goal. 

Thank you all for reading my blogs, both good and bad. I'll write up a summarization post about DPS909, and then, assuming all things go well, I'll see you all in DPS911, where the only things I'll have to worry about in that class, is taking what I learnt here, and applying it to a project that will have an actual version release! Stay tuned!