Open Source, an Adventure
Tags: opensource, motivation, discuss
Published: 2021-08-13 18:22:11

Hi :D

Today I want to tell you a story of mine, which caused me some serious questions.

##The lazy geek

My story started about a month ago, someone asked me : " Hey! Can you write me a Telegram bot with this features ? ", I said " Yes! just give me a *week* "

The next week was the week of learn & search. I learned how to write a simple bot in my language (PHP), learned some new concepts in PHP, and the most important part, I searched for some libraries and packages written in PHP for developing a bot in Telegram. I found some, I looked into their instructions and documents, and I started to think : " These guys made it so complex, I don't get it at all! ". I'm a bit lazy to, so I decided :
>*I'm gonna make a library for this job which I understand better and looks simpler*

 ![I'm the programmer now](https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/62686343/look-at-me-i-am-the-programmer-now.jpg)

##Making Frankenstein monster

I started my (very-first open-source) package, [Phelegram](https://github.com/ehsanghorbani190/Phelegram)!
I was so excited at first. I learned so much more about Github, Git, Making good READMEs for my package, Licenses, new things about PHP, Software engineering ideas, design patterns, and more! I made Phelegram piece by piece, added new tags week by week, and committed new changes and bug fixes day by day. I showed it to a friend and he sayed : " Man! This is amazing! It looks like a real-world package! "

![Happiness](https://blog.yellowoctopus.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/yellow-octopus-happy-meme-11.jpg)
  
It was a good time. I learned a lot, felt the real success that pro programmers talk about when they achieve victory, and gained self-confidence.

Unill...

##Questions made Disappointment !?

I faced some serious bugs, that would make me change the whole code, and it was not easy. While i was thinking for major changes in code, I faced a weird question: " Why am I doing this ? "
I made the bot for my friend weeks before this question, and I didn't have another project to do with this.  
My project was much better and bigger. *BUT* I couldn't answer the question because I got 2 bad reasons to stop the project:
* It was taking most of my time, Although my time was free, but developing speed was too slow, and it didn't lead to any successes. This was hurting me.
* The worse reason: MY PACKAGE DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING BETTER THAN OTHER ONES! I started this project to make something better and easy to use. but at this point, I looked at my project, and I said to myself:
>" It's far behind the other ones, Nobody has a reason to leave the other packages and use mine :( "
* It was limited, means that Telegram bot's have a limited features and I was at the start while others were far beyond the end.
![:(](https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/66028465/years-of-academy-training-wasted.jpg)

##Cutting the tree

![The End](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQOr6isq5AbeMxREPvp5fQ-HAopj0VPDi0Elg&usqp=CAU)

Two days ago, I stopped the project for the reasons I said. I really liked it, and i wonder **_Where do others get their ideas and motivation for their open-source project ? _**
That question got my attention and I thought it's a good topic to discuss with others who are better than me and done some open-source projects. Where's better than dev community :D

I'll be pleased if you answer my question or share your ideas with me, and help me to get another idea for another project, or a reason to resume Phelegram :D

Thanks for reading this post! And sorry if I'm not good at english :)