Djangonaut Showcase Session 4

Speaker 1: Welcome to Jangote Space Showcase. So it it is uh uh we we are organizing this space because uh i if like someone want to practice their public speaking. They can share uh their talk in a friendly space so you guys don't have to worry about um making mistakes or something we are just all friends here, so you can just uh make mistakes as many as you want. So So the main uh format of the talk is we have like first five minutes that is like eleven or four here so four minutes have passed for

Speaker 1: first five minutes for uh people to join and then we are gonna start the talks. So for We are gonna start the talks. Everybody will get five minutes for their talk and if if uh after five minutes I will I I will tell you or you you could end your talk. However, it is gonna go. So I'm gonna introduce speakers. We have Philip from Team Saturn. They are working on Django Core. Kofi from Team Saturn, they are also working on Django Core. And uh Abe

Speaker 1: from Team Venus, they are also working on Django Core and Philip from Team Neptune. So so first of all we are continuing with Philip Tay if he has joined Yeah, he has joined. So we are continuing with that. I'm gonna share this is slide.

Speaker 2: Okay. So my name is Philip Nart And um team certain. I don't know if team sutin the accessibility team is part of Django core, but team certain is contributing in Django accessibility. And I will be giving a title and Ask Early, Ask Often. So before the Django Not space, open source felt like the big intimidating thing for me. I imagine contributors being people who just knew things, so they clone a repo , make some changes then, boom, they are merged. But after I joined this program. I've learned that yeah, in open source communities, questions are really valued and we should all strive to

Speaker 2: ask them. So joining the Django notes space, I has completely shattered the view I had about asking questions. So particularly in this Django community. So since I started contributing to this project, I've asked many many questions and the best part is that ask questions they are actually encouraged so an example in my team always in our weekly um check-ins There are occasions where a Django note will have a question for the navigator and the navigator doesn't have an answer immediately. then she encourages you to oh ask it in the Discord or put it in the forum. And that has stood out to me because

Speaker 2: I imagine us to know, but This has shown that as a mentor, there are also people ask these questions. The discussions that you bring up are really, really fruitful. And I I like how they work. So aside from core contributions received um feedback on things I didn't set out to get from this program. So I got into this program to just contribute to Django. But after I joined this program I've received feedback from my mentor Feedback on um

Speaker 2: proposal submissions. All these are going in I set out to get from this program. So all I have to do to get this from people was to just ask. And you'll be surprised how willing people are willing to are available to help you. So um the essence of this short talk is to encourage people who had the mindset I had that and don't hesitate to ask for help in this community. um always ask when you need help and yeah you'll get it. So I encourage everybody, you should always ask

Speaker 2: early. Ask often. And as I've written on this slide, I think the best open source contributors don't know everything. They just ask questions early and often. So thank you.

Speaker 1: Yeah, great talk, Philip Notte. And uh I'm sorry if like I butchered someone's name. Yeah, um so our next uh uh presenter is Kofi.

Speaker 3: Yes, Fix Faran. Hi everyone. So yes, my name is Kofi. I'm in the saturent team, also with uh Philip. Uh so today I'll talk to you about various things that I learned. through my experience in the Django Note space since a few weeks. Um so the first thing is uh about the importance of accessibility in technology

Speaker 4: and in

Speaker 3: web It's something that us tech engineers we use to overlook. But it's uh it's very important. Uh it's about bringing more people to use our products. And it's not only for disabilities, it's also it can touch various things. By example, um How web how fast your websites can be downloaded. And me, um, I was born in in Benin. Today in some areas you can have a very bad connection or sometimes it can be very costly. And I can see the impact of accessibility because if you have a website that can load very fast with very minimal

Speaker 3: information. you can reduce the cost. So it's uh it's very important, uh not just for people, but even for business. Uh the second thing is about uh the ticketing system of Django. Uh I used to think that most open source projects use GitHub for their uses for their ticketing and I just discovered that Django used uh his own I don't know why. It will be interesting to know if there is a story behind it. But yeah, it's interesting to know

Speaker 4: that.

Speaker 3: Um okay AI also uh the importance of AI. I I I just um finished a bootcamp in AI also. Um and it's I think uh apart from all the the hype around it that's it can be very useful for open source because it can lower uh the access for for beginners to open source projects. Um my example is that on one of my tickets Uh I was confused about um a button that was present in different files. Uh I had to modify the button. And I didn't know why this button was in other files. And I just used AI to get give me some help and ask

Speaker 3: him about the documentation in the code And he gave me a little help to understand what was going on. So it's Philip talked about the fact that it can be uh overwhelming and uh daunting so ai can help us to uh to lower the barrier for open source contribution but also uh it doesn't have all the context So you still need humans with um with context, with experience. Uh because for the for the tickets there was another thing related but linked to architecture and i wasn't sure that a i could give a solution to that so we still need human feedback feedback a lot And it's not just about the code.

Speaker 3: It's about documentation. On my tickets, I made the change and I thought it was over, but uh I learned that there was some documentation to update and It was just changing one word. I didn't think that I needed to change documentation for that, but indeed there was a tutorial on Django where this feature was used And yes, it's also about the documentation, it's also about the architecture, the best practice. And it's important to be patient. Uh no rush. Take his time to give the best solution for our tickets. So that's it. Thanks yours.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Kofi. It was a great talk. Uh in my understanding why Django has a ticking s ticketing system because like GitHub issues come after Django. So Django is very old and

Speaker 3: Wow, okay. Okay.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So

Speaker 3: as

Speaker 1: as it is said, like old is gold. So And next talk is Abe Hanukkah

Speaker 5: Hello, my name is Abe. I am very appreciative of the program. It's been a really uh great experience for me. Uh the topic I'm going to talk about is sort of a side benefit you get when you contribute to open source community to open source projects and joining an open source community. It's something that's um I struggled with uh you know, I did my work was uh freelance work and so typically that meant I was working solo on a single project. Maybe collaborating with one or two people, often they're not technical. And so that said, um, I didn't have much teamwork, much collaboration. people I know getting reviewed or feedback on my code was something that I never really experienced. And

Speaker 5: joining the Janganot program really filled in all those gaps. Um was working alongside my team. Th I I my the PR that I I worked on, the ticket that I worked on was a long process. I got a lot of feedback, I kept iterating and you know my teammates, my mentor and others. kept on commenting and contributing and um and improving my understanding of of Django as a whole and the process. And so to me it really filled that gap and And uh which is something that when you're interviewing at larger companies, that's a skill that they want. Um they want to know that you can collaborate with others and and so it's sort of like a side benefit that that I gained from this program

Speaker 5: was that now I have a like a story to talk about when I'm in an interview. Um so yeah, I'm I'm extremely grateful. It's been a fun program. And that's all.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Ave. It was a great talk and congratulations for your job.

Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1: And next joke is from Philippe.

Speaker 6: Hello everyone. Um have some notes because I'm a little rusty on public speaking. So if you don't If you don't mind me just referring to my notes. And I'm going to echo a lot of what uh the other speakers have already said. Um I You you will hear me talk about uh AIs there in the notes. Um I I agree with a lot of what Kofi said about lowering the entry barrier uh by making AI a little bit more welcome in in open source. I sympathize with Philip as well. And Abe, I'm on the same boat here. I've been a solo developer for many years, for for just about three years now only, and trying to transition to a career in tech. So

Speaker 6: who am I? After a career of 30 years in education, training and management, I'm trying to make a career in tech now. Since January, I've been working full-time and then some as an unpaid developer. My bank account isn't thrilled, but my brain is having a great time. I taught myself to code during the pandemic, and then after six months of immersion, I decided to use my budding skills to automate the business that I was running at the time. That's when I chose Django for many reasons that many uh other developers have chosen it as well. And I've been using it nearly daily for three years. On my own, solo developer, much like Abe.

Speaker 6: Why I joined the program. Well, I wanted to gain confidence contributing to open source. Putting my work in public was terrifying. Every single commit, every comment felt like standing on a stage with no pants I also wanted to navigate the Django ecosystem better, understand track, the forum , which can seem overwhelming for a newcomer. Projects like Django Commons and Jazz Band and how they relate to Django in general. So you could say that some middle-aged men would have bought a Harley Davidson for In a situation like mine, having a midlife identity crisis, but I chose instead to apply for Jangonaut space.

Speaker 6: Now, in all seriousness, I am proud to call myself a Jangonaut And I can't wait to get my hands on one of those Django stickers for a bike just in case On the technical growth, what I learned. Well, obviously debugging tools and uh teams uh tutorial helped me a lot with that, and then we showcased it in one of my in my first PR. The Django debug toolbar internals, of course, thanks to Mathias ' presentation, Mathias' um walkthrough of the release process to PyPI? I hope I'm saying it right. I think I've been saying PyPi for the longest time until I heard him say it.

Speaker 6: And just uh so much more, so much more uh related to to the debug toolbar and all of that. And then some Oh, talks testing, never seen anything like that. And why my tests, all of my tests were failing and how well duh I had to run just SQLite. Nothing else is going to run on my system because I had nothing else installed. So all of that is learning. Advanced Python concepts. My God, the first time that I read at that issue, a conversation, and I started going through the conversation between uh Tim and Matthias about uh the benefits of MRO versus um monkey patching, I felt completely lost. I I was thinking I gotta abandon this. I'm I'm not qualified for this thing. But They came to help

Speaker 6: and team recommended this wonderful video and then I started learning about MRO and the C3 algorithm and It all started making sense and you know what? It's I I I think I understand it and I think I could explain it now. Uh so that was wonderful. Another learning, another lesson learned from the program How then I learned more and more about it and how Django had re-implemented it and changed it and then of course finally I understood how Matthias was uh using it and why That conversation between Mathias and Tim about uh monkey patch and vs. Airmaro and all of that and I was able to contribute some testing for that ticket. And there goes another PR. And now I'm trying to understand better at a much deeper level than I have so far.

Speaker 6: Uh serializate serialization. Um Why all of a sudden JSON became so common in this space and uh understanding as much as I can about that before I uh contribute my PR. Community and collaboration. I I as I just said, I went from feeling completely lost in technical discussions to being able to contribute meaningful code. And that was in large parts thanks to the mentorship and the peer support. And as many others, I came for the code but stayed for the community, learning from Django TV, Django News, Django Chat. I've been following them for many years um Adam Johnson, Will Vincent, Carlton Gibson and so many others. It's a fantastic community and I'm proud to be part of it.

Speaker 6: On the subject of confidence and mind shift mindset shift. Um One of the benefits that is already real that I'm already realizing out of this program is that we don't just want this to be working in our in Team Neptune on the Django debug toolbar. But I see it as a larger project to uh becoming open source contributors are large. So I was doing some Studying of the docs for GeoJango, which I'm gonna start using tomorrow and another free project that I'm working on. And I found a couple of errors. A couple of years ago, I don't know that I would have done anything about those errors But now I opened a ticket for one of them, did some research, documented as much as I could of the t

Speaker 6: of what I learned about the ticket. It's a library that had already been uh retired, and we were still mentioning in the docs for Django. And I just put my notes there. I knew I couldn't go any farther with that. I have zero experience with Geo Django. I'm a beginner completing the tutorial. I left it at that. Then later on I found an issue in the documentation, just an error that I could fix myself, and just went ahead and fixed it and submitted the ticket, read the Django contribution guidelines, realized that I didn't even need an issue for something that small and got the PR merged. And then Matthias somehow found it in the in the commit history. So that's a Ray Payne off, Tim, the goals of the program.

Speaker 6: You're getting people to contribute to open source. That's it. And then on my reflection on the use of AI, I could speak on these for hours and I had to get Chat GPT to really help me trip my trip my presentation on this topic. Because I have a lot of thoughts on it. As I said, I'm a solo developer. I have been relying heavily on AI to Build, support , help test, optimize a production application that is relied upon by 7,000 people in in and dockerizing a lot of stuff that I put myself through that I had absolutely zero skill to work on as a as a free code camp graduate.

Speaker 6: So AI has helped me tremendously. And coming into this community, I was initially feeling guilty that I would be applying the same workflow to open source. I have to accept that while I'm a beginner programmer, I'm also a critical thinker and with insatiable curiosity. AI can help onboard Heston contributors by tackling easy peak links. I wish there were many, many more in Django. We could develop AI usage guidelines, not just for onboarding devs, but also for their AI pair programmers. I know ethical concerns exist, but for open source contribution and community growth, embracing AI is better than resisting it.

Speaker 6: As m as far as I am concerned, authenticity authenticity matters. I won't pretend that I spent 30 minutes parameterizing a test suit suite when a clever AI prompt did the job way faster than me My rule, because I had to set myself some strict rules for using AI when committing code to production, is are quite simple now. Never commit any code that I don't understand. Okay for AI to co-author, but I sign off and I sign off on the work. I am accountable for any work that I have AI do with me. AI is a tool for autocompletion, not a substitute for intuition or expertise. Context matters.

Speaker 6: And then when in need of indulging in a healthy dose of confirmation bias, I just look to Simon Willison for reassurance that I haven't turned to the dark side. So what's next? Well continue contributing to Django and open source. Complete at least two more debug toolbar contributions before the program ends. Keep refining my debugging, testing, optimization skills, improve my fundamentals with structured non-AI learning, where I have I force myself to read the docs, go through the man pages, yuck and do some coding challenges with no AI support. I also want to eventually support newcomers

Speaker 6: I know now firsthand how overwhelming it can be. I absolutely would love to attend the Django conference in the future and of course keep pushing toward my goal of becoming a full-time developer. Thank you.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Philip. It was a great talk and it was like really inspiring and I can also relate because I am also um s like a loan developer freelancing So I can relate very much and also what you talked about AI, like the AI use of AI is Like you are responsible for the code if you are committing AI code. That was a great point that you made. Thank you for a great talk.