Everyone Struggles

Everyone struggles. You’re not behind. You’re learning.

Over the past three weeks, I’ve been the primary contributor to a Fedora project, and honestly, the experience has been as challenging as it has been rewarding.

The project began as a fresh Python code base, with contributors from various backgrounds jumping in to help. There was no consistent coding style, no defined structure, and no clear direction — just a group of people doing their best to contribute, myself included.

When I was accepted into the Outreachy internship, I took on the responsibility of organizing the project and guiding its progress under the tutelage of my mentor, Tomas Hrčka. It sounded simple until I actually got into the thick of it.

It Wasn’t Easy

My first few days were mostly spent tackling unresolved bugs and trying to trace what changes had caused what issues. After that, I began restructuring the folders to improve the code’s readability and maintainability.

Now, I’m in the process of transitioning the project to FastAPI, a more modern framework that offers better scalability and cleaner organization. Still, even with that direction, there have been plenty of frustrating “why isn’t this working?” moments.

I once spent hours writing a continuous integration (CI) pipeline, only to realize I was using the wrong CI tool.

Another time, I couldn’t get the linter to stop throwing errors even though I thought I was following all the rules (spoiler: I wasn’t, but I didn’t know which one I had violated).

It’s been a cycle of trial and error, lots of reading, and plenty of struggling.

And That’s Okay

I used to think the people who built impressive open source projects just inherently knew everything, as if they woke up and wrote flawless code. But working behind the scenes has shown me that even experienced developers go through periods of uncertainty and trial-and-error.

Nobody starts out as an expert. And that feeling of being stuck? It’s part of learning.

There are times when I don’t even know what question to ask — I just know something’s broken. But saying “I’m stuck” or talking it through has helped more times than I can count. Rubber duck debugging is a real thing.

Final Thoughts

So here’s what I keep reminding myself (and maybe you need to hear it too):

• It’s normal to feel overwhelmed.
• It’s okay not to have all the answers.
• Struggling is part of the journey.

What truly matters is showing up, making the effort, and reaching out when you need support.