🤔 I Don’t Get GitHub
In college I had my nose to the grindstone with school and work and internships that I was never really a side project type of person. When I get home from work now I’m usually not on the computer — I’ll watch TV or run or cook or read. Like most people, I probably waste too much time in front of the TV or scrolling through social media. I’m ready for that to change.
I’ve had enough of a break since graduating college and I’m ready to be on the computer learning and building myself as a developer more. I have a friend who always seems to be finding new and cool projects on GitHub and he sends them to me. I was asking him things like “How do you use GitHub?” and “How do you even find these things?”
I realized my big question was “How do I make GitHub an interesting place for me?”
To answer that big question I had to think about what I do find interesting. I’m list oriented so HERE WE GO:
- Comic books
- Cooking
- Craft cocktails
- Wine
- True crime (SSDGM)
- Books
- Dance and aerial arts
- Music
- Art
- Pop culture
The reason I got into computer science was because I like solving puzzles and CS helps you use those puzzle solving skills in so many different disciplines. It should have been obvious to me: time to find GitHub projects that intersect with my other interests.
- Art: Albers as a Millennial — I knew about this one because Billy Roh presented at SeattleJS in 2017 when I went. I was fascinated by using JavaScript for art.
- Music: lacymorrow/album-art — I found this simply by searching “music” in github. I think it would be fun to leverage it for toy projects!
- Comics: jdmoran/SYSDOOM — I was searching “comics” and “marvel” and then decided to search “Squirrel Girl” (read my other blog post, Squirrels Who Code, if you’re unfamiliar) and now I’m so glad I did. I’m positively delighted someone made this language.
Now that I have some starting repos to look into, I need to set aside time to do so. I have two hypotheses for what I think will help me “get GitHub” and be better about working on side projects and exploring the work of other people.
Hypothesis 1
If I scroll through GitHub like I scroll through social media, I will be more inspired to work on personal projects and will find new tech to play with.
Hypothesis 2
Leaving my computer on my dining room table (instead of the ottoman) and listening to podcasts while I eat (at the table, not the couch) will make it easier to get to browsing on the computer after dinner instead of binge watching Netflix.
So wish me luck! Let me know if you find any weird repos on GitHub that you find interesting. Here’s to a summer of inspiration, using my time more effectively, and probably more topics for blog posts 🥂