NWOC Project Report

NJACK Winter of Code

About NWOC

NWOC (NJACK Winter of Code) is a program by NJACK (The Official Computer Science Club of IIT Patna) that helps students understand the paradigm of Open Source contribution and gives them real world software development experience.

Project Selection

There were more than 40 projects to choose from and contribute to, in 2020 edition of NWOC. I was restricted only to Python and Java Android projects due to my skillset.

I selected one project from Python and other from Android. They were namely Codemon “a CP tool to help competitive programmers” and Heal-O-Chat “an android application for people to get mental help and socialize with others.”

Community Bonding

First, I forked the project and cloned it to my system, then, I built it and got a glance of what it looked like.

Then, I talked to the Project mentor and they helped me on how I can start contributing to it. In this project, any participant could have worked on any issue that were listed by the mentor. And, then the best PR would be merged to the project. Not to mention, it was pretty competitive.

Contributing to Codemon

These PRs of mine were merged successfully to the project :-

**PR #1* “Added help section in the program for new users*”

**PR #2* “Updated the CPP template code*”

**PR #3* “Added registration for new users*”

**PR #4* “Fixed bugs in registration to validate new users*”

These all were my contributions to this project. I learned a lot and enjoyed every bit while doing it. My four other PRs were not merged to the codebase because only the best PR was to be merged.

Contributing to Heal-O-Chat

These PRs of mine were successfully merged to the project :-

**PR #1** “Fixed bug with recycler view being refreshed”

**PR #2* “Added Delete for me feature for text and images in the chats*”

**PR #3* “Fixed a bug which was causing wrong redirect*”

**PR #4* “Added Delete for everyone feature for text and images in the chats*”

**PR #5* “Removed notification bar on full screen*”

**PR #6** “Replaced all the error toast message with snackbars”

**PR #7* “Fixed a bug for loading messages in the chat*”

**PR #8* “Added slide animation when going from one activity to another*”

**PR #9* “Added loading dialog when loading data from backend for better UI*”

**PR #10* “Sorted users in the chat list by the time they were last messaged*”

**PR #11* “Fixed bug with showing a user online*”

**PR #12* “Displayed posts on home page with latest post on the top*”

**PR #13** “Fixed a bug with post later feature”

**PR #14* “Added a button to go to the top of the feed*”

**PR #15* “Fixed a bug with liking posts which let users like a post multiple times*”

Conclusion

I had exams for like half of December. Then also, I pushed myself to perform better and outrank others and get as more points as possible and secure a good rank. Finally, after one month and many sleepless nights, I am very happy with getting 9th position among more than 1200 registered participants from all over the country.

NWOC 2020 Leaderboard

I learned so many important things during this one month and most important of them being how to approach a problem and think of a solution. I also got to meet and talk to some great people.

Now, I am more confident of my skills and can start working on any project. I am really thankful to NJACK and my mentors who helped me whenever I needed help during the whole period.

Connect with me :- https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaurv1407/