My experience at Layer5
Tags: opensource, blog, cloudnative, servicemesh
Published: 2021-05-15 05:17:09

## Joining Layer5
It was Dec 2020, I was looking at some programs at LFX Programs (previously CommunityBridge) where some orgs like Linux Kernel, CNCF post openings on mentorships to work on. At that time, I came across a mentorship program called "Meshery". I applied out of interest and found a link to join their slack. I joined in and realized that the program needs community member for that program such that he/she has done impactful contributions previously in the project. Then I quickly withdrawn the application and started becoming active in the community. That's how I joined Layer5

## My initial works
At the beginning, I wanted to test the project as a user but felt a bit hard because I wasn't ready for cloud native at that moment. Tweaked some settings in my system but no results. So, I thought is there any way to contribute the project and that's how I started looking on Documentation. I gradually looked at some issues, commented and took up the work. The project's documentation is mainly made of Jekyll so I had to install Ruby, and since Makefile is dominant in order to install dependencies, I used Linux as my main development environment. It felt a bit hard at first because I never used Jekyll before. Then gradually, I learned about Jekyll and YAML, fixed some bugs and done even bigger works!

## My greatest work so far
The greatest work so far I've done is to redesign `mesheryctl` command reference page. The page was outdated for a while so I was given a task to redesign and update the doc. It felt tedious at first, then some ideas came in, took my peer's help and finally completed. The doc was so impressive such that it's updated with the latest spec and understandable! 

## My surprise! 
After taking a lot works, I got recognized such that I've been added to their community and their GitHub organization! It all happened at one day, a team was created including me and I got a message that "your works have been recognized a lot... So, we decided to add you on our community profile in our website" I WAS SURPRISED AND EXCITED AT THE SAME TIME! O_O 🎉🎉🥳😂😂
It really got a pride feeling within me. So I accepted! :)
Link: https://layer5.io/community/members/ (First profile)

## At present
After doing some doc work, I realized why not try new field and work on it. That's where I again used the project but this time with Minikube cluster enabled. (If you guys wonder what is Minikube, it's a simple one-node local Kubernetes cluster which can be run on Virtualization enabled machines like WSL2, HyperV, VMware etc). It WORKED! I was in state of awe! I can't believe I really ran a cloud-native project locally. Then I started installing Golang, learning about Kubernetes and Golang and started working on `mesheryctl` as tester and now a contributor (will catch up soon, coz I started recently) xD

## Conclusion
In a nutshell, I thought only skills matter in such a DEV ecosystem. But, I was wrong. If it's open-source, community also matters in order to co-operate and work in harmony. I learned that when I joined Layer5. It's an interesting experience and I hope this continues long further! 😍❤❤