The story behind my first ever pull request
Tags: github, watercooler, motivation, discuss
Published: 2020-10-13 05:27:19

It’s the month of opensource so I thought why not share how I made my first pull request in Dec 2017 (& try to remember) what went down for my first ever contribution on github.

## Backstory

So when I was in my high school (12th grade), I knew there is something called GitHub, and software developers are on it (it still says this, 50 mil devs 😮 jeez!) I was curious so I quickly signed up. But damn I understood nothing about it !!, everything was new (& confusing), it asked me to create my first repo but I don’t know what does that even mean. Anyways I forgot about it after a few weeks & started to focus on my studies (_board exams in India are a sport in itself_)

Fast forward a few months, I enrolled in GGSIPU and took BCA as my undergraduate degree.

> I realized college education is nothing fancy. It felt like a school for a few months. Where are those cheerleaders? huh. Fuck you movies.

No kidding, although the transition from high school to 1st year in college was a rollercoaster, it helped me grow as a social h00man.

I got to know that one of our seniors had started a Tech Society called _BitsPlease_ (it was a year old when we knew about it), I took the interview with a few of my other friends and got selected in the society. Our first task or so as dictated by our senior was to solve coding challenges listed on the society’s [website](https://bitsplease.pythonanywhere.com).

Everything was new to us, although it was an easier transition for me because I used to binge on [HackerRank](https://www.hackerrank.com/bhupeshv) during highschool (I read some software dev’s interview on a newspaper, he suggested a few websites to practice, hackerrank caught my eye).

I found the newspaper article where I got to know about HackerRank for the first time, (yus I used to cut important things from the newspaper 👀, want to see my collection ?) this article helped (and motivated) me in a lot of ways.

<center>
<p>
	<img alt="Web developer interview" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&amp;id=1hwC_4SzghloDYfLCaZCVvuMloJ4YWF3s">
	<figcaption>Important parts are underlined (sorry for weird image scan, the paper is almost 3+ years old)</figcaption>
</p>
</center>

Note that back in those days I didn’t use to have a working internet connection, so I used to go to this nearby café (1 min distance) to do random stuff on the Internet. Well, to be honest, I used to study C++ there in 12th (surprise ! I am no self-taught programmer) then quickly I started getting along with my mentor, sometimes I used to end up teaching others. I remember I took my mentor’s place for some time. It was probably my go-to place if I was bored. Almost every evening I used to go there.

> For people curious about what I used to teach, it was basically like a computer training institute everything from MS office suites to basic computer science was taught there. I was teaching kids about computers and some grown-ups about Excel & HTML/CSS.

## The [PR](https://github.com/BitsPleaseMSI/BitsPlease-solutions/pull/6)

As mentioned earlier, we had to solve programming problems. I choose [this one](https://bitsplease.pythonanywhere.com/problem/18) probably because it was an easier one ;). I wrote the question in my notebook and went home. The next morning I solved it using C++. As far as I remember, I used to have Dev C++ as an IDE. Now ofc you could be asking why I didn’t solve the problem straight in the café (it was easy right ?), well the environment was not comfortable constant chattering of people. Moreover, I wasn’t paying them for Internet usage. Moreover, I find myself more productive at my home (do you too ? tell me in the comments).

> Fun Fact: Indian schools/colleges still use Turbo C++

I transferred the text file to my Pendrive, then in the evening I went to the café, inserted the pd into one of the PCs. Now I really didn’t know how to contribute, I searched and found a blog which had step by step instructions, followed it by heart, and successfully made a PR. I clearly remember I did it in the first try (No fuckups) and, No I didn’t use `git` bash. GitHub’s web interface was well enough.

## Conclusion

Now ofc I didn’t contribute to that big OSS project, which is making a difference in people’s lives but it was enough for me to headstart my github journey and learn something new. I am still on this path.

It’s been 3 years since then, I was in my first year when I made that PR, and now I have [completed](https://bhupesh-v.github.io/college-is-over/) my under-graduation. During this time I learned and shared a lot. I ended up maintaining the tech society for quite some time in my college.

I want to thank my senior, Amit (if he is reading this 👀) for letting me dive in opensource and also my first ever programming mentor, _Rahul_ from whom I learned C++ and OOPs and a lot of different things. Thanks a lot, both of you.

I still have a lot to learn. I will be sharing what new things I do right here on my blog or on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/bhupeshimself) and my [newsletter](https://buttondown.email/bhupesh).

Anyways “How did you feel when you made that first PR?, A faster beating of heart 💓, No ?”

![jerry-quick-heartbeat](https://media1.tenor.com/images/75092f912fdab0e8e83cac21d6e9439c/tenor.gif?itemid=7839058)