How KWoC helped me get an experience of open source. 
Tags: opensource, github, kwoc
Published: 2021-01-04 18:08:57

## About KWoC
Kharagpur Winter of Code is a 5-week long online program conducted by [KOSS](https://kossiitkgp.org/) for students who are new to open source software development. The program not only helps students to get involved in open source, but also prepares them for many open source summer programs; Google Summer of Code being one of them.


## My contributions
I was not able to contribute much during KWoC as I was working on some other side project. ![It ain't much](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/ib9k0f0eifr151wkkw9f.jpeg)


### Projects
I contributed to 4 different projects during this period.
+ {% github grapheo12/iqps no-readme %}
+ {% github shrinish123/GuessMovie no-readme %}
+ {% github adityabisoi/ds-algo-solutions no-readme %}
+ {% github Surajbokde/web-development-Resource no-readme %}


### Merged PRs
+ **grapheo12/iqps**
    {% github https://github.com/grapheo12/iqps/pull/38 %}
        I only made a small changes to the static files of the website to change the appearance of the search results such that the result titles are hyperlinks to the papers instead of displaying separate links.  
+ **shrinish123/GuessMovie**
    * {% github https://github.com/shrinish123/GuessMovie/pull/15 %}
      Installed *nodemon* as a development dependency and added a npm script named *dev* to automatically restart the server each time the code is modified.
    * {% github https://github.com/shrinish123/GuessMovie/pull/18 %}
      Removed the apikey to *omdapi* used in the project from everywhere in the sourcecode and configured the apikey from environment with the help of *dotenv* library. Also, added documentation to generate and add apikey during deployment or development.  
    * {% github https://github.com/shrinish123/GuessMovie/pull/24 %}
      Updated server behaviour such that it responds with appropriate HTTP response codes to the browser in case of errors.  
+ **adityabisoi/ds-algo-solutions**
    {% github https://github.com/adityabisoi/ds-algo-solutions/pull/450 %}
      Added a solution in *python* to the one of the problems.  
+ **Surajbokde/web-development-Resource**
    {% github https://github.com/Surajbokde/web-development-Resource/pull/104 %}
      Added the amazing [You Don't Know JS Yet (book series)](https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS) to the JS resources.  


### Languages
My contributions were mainly in *Python* and *JavaScript*.


## Background
I am student of [IIT Kharagpur](http://www.iitkgp.ac.in/). When I first heard about KWoC and open source last year, I was not really into it because I did not know what opensource is. Later, after getting the essence of opensource and getting to know how great it is, I started contributing to opensource on GitHub. So, naturally, I participated in Hacktoberfest and now in  KWoC. I even aspire to participate in GSoC 2021 now.

## Experience
KWoC is definitely a great experience mainly to students aspiring for GSoC and similar programs. The mentor-mentee interactions can be be very helpful sometimes. Although if you do not contribute much during the period, you will definitely get a considerable exposure.