From Chaos to PR

It’s been a week, and I tried everything to get assigned on issues. I didn’t know it would be this tough to just get assigned — not to solve the problem, just to get the green light. One major thing I realized is that submitting the solution is easy, but getting assigned is the final boss. I opened a few issues hoping I would be assigned early since I was the one who spotted the bugs. Finder’s keepers, right? Apparently not.

But then came another realization — it was never about the problem. It was a test of patience. Are you really interested in solving it, or would you move on to the next repository? I waited and waited, checking my inbox every hour. Still nothing. Finally, I decided to move on. DevPath already had 550 issues and counting, and I didn’t want to spend my youth waiting in that queue.

So I moved to a project called ChatBuddy — WhatsApp, but on a terminal. I found this really interesting, and since fewer people were active, I took the opportunity and opened two issues. I was sure I’d get assigned early since the maintainer was active. But where’s the fun without a little waiting, right? I seriously couldn’t understand — if the maintainer was active, why weren’t my issues being assigned? It felt like my GitHub notifications were completely invisible. Fun fact — they are still not assigned. Lol.

I decided to move on again. No more waiting. The next project that caught my attention was SahiDawa — an open-source platform that helps citizens verify medicines, find trusted pharmacies, and report suspicious drugs across India. This project was built entirely for India and guess what — I finally got assigned! The wait was over.

The issue was labeled “Advanced” — improving focus styling and adding ref forwarding to the EmptyState component. Let me break down what this actually means. First, the component had a “ghost cursor” problem where it lacked visible focus indicators. Although Tab navigation worked, keyboard-only users couldn’t see which button they were actually on. Second, the component didn’t support refs. By wrapping it with React.forwardRef(), parent components and external libraries can now access the underlying DOM element (the actual HTML element). This simple pass-through mechanism makes it easy to integrate with tooltips, popovers, Floating UI, and other advanced UI features.

Sounds complex? The fix was actually just a few lines of code. But understanding why those lines matter — that’s where the real learning happened.

Finally, I submitted my code, and wow — the PR was so tangled! There were multiple automated checks running all at once. I am still figuring out how GitHub actually orchestrates multiple bots to process, check, and verify everything behind the scenes, but it’s a fascinating process I’m eager to learn more about.

First milestone officially unlocked.