Group Project

For my group project, I’m hoping to contribute to something beginner friendly and impactful. I’m still a little intimidated by open source, and I’d rather build confidence by contributing consistently to a project where I can actually understand what’s going on instead of feeling lost in a huge codebase.

Ideally, I would love to work on a personal finance related project if my group is interested. Because of my background working in wealth management and studying finance, I feel like I have real domain knowledge I can bring to the table. One project that stood out to me is Actual Budget. Budgeting is such an important skill, and it is kind of crazy how true “more money, more problems” actually is. I have seen the real world impact of financial planning, and it is definitely something I want to keep improving in my own life too, so, being able to contribute to a tool that helps people manage their money better feels especially meaningful.

Another project I am interested in is Open Food Facts, which we discussed in class. It also seems beginner friendly. Over the past year, I have paid much more attention to nutrition labels and what I am putting into my body (because I’ve fallen victim to the fiber and protein craze), so it would be cool to contribute to a project like that as well.

I think the biggest thing that might stand in my way is procrastinating actually contributing. Having a group that makes me feel more confident and holds me accountable would help a lot. In terms of what I can contribute, I can bring expereince with Python and JavaScript, time, willingness to learn, attention to detail, and domain knowledge in finance and nutrition.

Small Contributions

My small contributions are going pretty well so far, but there has definitely been a learning curve.

I learned the hard way to always reread the contributing guidelines after submitting a PR to our class website without properly claiming the issue first. That was a good reminder to slow down and be more careful with the process.

The contribution I am most proud of was when a student reported that an article linked on the class site was missing and could not be found online anymore. After looking for it for a while and coming up empty, I suggested linking the Wayback Machine archived version instead. I thought that was a clever solution, considering how long it took me to find any trace of the article. I gues it’s true that you cannot really wipe anything from the internet.

Project Evaluation

I completed a project evaluation for Actual Budget.