Joel's Open Source Dev Blog

So for Lab 1 our tasks were fairly simple. Find a partner to review a repo on and make contributions, no matter the scale, to their code. Be it a suggestion for their code, reporting an issue, or even fixing up small details in their readme. So through slack I partnered up with one of my coursemates  Niaz Much like me, he wrote his code in nodejs, so it was perfect since I can go through his code easier through my understanding of node. His code, though written in the same language, differed from mine a lot. For one, he didn't use yargs so he had to process the arguments manually, and secondly he didn't use fetch and opted for a module called linkinator. No problem, in fact it's an opportunity for me to understand the logic and components that he used. I forked a copy of the repo, cloned it and tested it out for myself. The code worked perfectly as intended and processed urls well. Functionally, I couldn't find find anything in the code I could identify as a flaw or imp...

So our first OSD600 assignment, make CLI program that checks for the status of URLs inside a file, indicating wheth er they functional or dead links. I present to you linkChek . A CLI tool that parses text from a file (and webpages as well!) and HTTP requests all the URLs encapsulated in it for its responses. From there it indicates whether they are [GOOD] or [BAD] links, or just [UNKNOWN] Yeah I got lazy and opted for wordart so don't mind the logo (I think it's pretty slick though) And yes I know the name's a bit uninspiring to say the least (again I came up with it on the fly and think it's pretty good) but I was more concerned with making the program itself. At first, having to write the program all by myself was pretty intimidating, I slacked off too much during the summer and my brain needed a refresher for writing code. Luckily, the Slack page was filled with helpful information, and there were quite a number of my peers that were writing in JavaScript, which I ...

So I know the last post read a lot like an English essay assignment, that's mostly because I didn't really know how this course would've played out and treated it like any other assignment, straight to the point. But throughout the week I came to realise how casual and freeform this Open Source Dev course is and it's definitely got to do with our Professor, David Humphrey  and the way he's set up the course.  Firstly, the fact that it's asynchronous so my 13 hour time difference doesn't make things hard, unlike other courses that last until 2 am where I am. Also just cause it's asynchronous doesn't mean our interactions with him are practically none. In fact it's much more than any synchronous class. He's set up a slack group for the class that he's emphasized is pretty much imperative for success in the course, and because of that, communicating with the prof and even the class is a 24/7 thing rather than limited to class time. So I find...

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog. My name is Joel Azwar and I'm a student/amateur programmer studying Computer Programming and Analysis in Seneca College in Toronto. I've taken up an Open Source Development course this semester and this blog is going to be dedicated to my ventures into open source technology and the progress that comes along with learning about it. So it's going to be my personal developer journal.  Open Source technology is something that's always intrigued me about the field of programming. I think it's quite fascinating how programmers all around the world can combine each other's efforts to improve, fix, or change something very drastically. Regardless of what they do, it helps advance the project one way or another which is a positive all around.  The scale of it is also quite captivating. There are millions of developers all around the world and they can contribute to any open source projects. I truly believe open source technology is a qui...