Hello there ! I'm Yash#

I’m Yash Kumar Verma, a third-year undergraduate student at VIT University, India. have been involved in the world of open-source since I was 15y/o.

Early Days : Baby Steps#

I started my journey with FOSSASIA and was an active contributor whilst participating in Google CodeIn (finalist in 2017) for three years. I worked on numerous projects, found bugs & submitted improvements.

This made me really interested in the world of open source, as it gave me the opportunity to work on something that the community was actively using, and how even my small contributions were affecting a large project.

I maintained one project at FOSSASIA, called Labyrinth. It was a very active project with 1.4k+ 🌟 start and about 150 forks.

Ever since then, I have kept myself engaged in the world of open-source. This has allowed me to learn about best practices, the logic behind design choices, the impact of minor decisions on project lifecycle, ensuring reliability, and explore new fields.

Warming up : First Year of College#

In my freshman year, I came across CircuitVerse in an online lab during college classes. The project interested me and upon researching found that it was an open-source tool written in javascript and ruby.

During the semester, I digged through the codebase out of curiosity and implemented one new component in the simulator by self that we needed for our experiments during the labs. Currently its being used by CircuitVerse users all over the world! I love the power that Open Source gives to improve the lives of others.

Later because of my involvement with the project, I was honored to be selected as the Google Season of Docs Mentor for the project (listed here). As of now, I perform the roles of a maintainer in two CircuitVerse Projects, and am a member of the organization.

Towards the end of the first year of college, the world faced the COVID-19 virus, that forced everyone to return to the homes from university.

Recent History : Second Year of College#

Before the start of second year of college, I came to know about MLH Fellowship. (More about my experience in the MLH Fellowship in a separate blog post 😉). I applied into MLH the fellowship, and to my surprise I was among the ~120 students selected in the very first batch. There, I got the opportunity to work along-with a very talented and diverse team, under the guidance of Jani Eväkallio and Rick Hanlon II (from Facebook). I worked on Facebook's React Native Framework

During my time as a fellow, I specifically worked on decoupling the RNTester application from the React mono-repo, refactoring the codebase, and redesigning the application. This was a challenging and exciting task, with a steep learning curve and tight schedule.

I learned a lot about writing scalable applications, how to work with large codebases, testing mechanisms, application architectures, working in a team, effort estimation, and also time management as I had regular college running with periodic exams parallel to the 40-hour/week fellowship.

As of now, I lead ACM-VIT, one of the most active student chapter affiliated to the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery as Director of Technical Operations / Technical Director.

Then, I applied to Google Summer of Code where I worked with caMicroScope, a medical imaging organization. The project was a complex one, written in NodeJS, and I majorly worked on RBAC Authorization with Cache Implementation using higher order functions. I have also authored a new project at the organization, the admin panel which allows the org. to manage its members, i'm currently a maintainer at the organization.

During all this, college was going in parallel, and during final examinations I came across fampay, which was hiring interns. I knew that I had college and GSoC to deal with, I applied anyway.

Things change a bit : Year 3, Semester 5/8#

I got introductory call from fampay just before my last exam, and was required to submit my internship task the next day. I built it, explored a new database while doing so - and after about three interviews, I got to intern at fampay. Parallel to this, I was working on my GSoC project, and companies had started coming to college to hire students for the next summer (summer of 2022).

With GSoC ending, college, internship, college interviews, and shifting to Bareilly in parallel, I faced a small health issue, and I had to resign from the internship after 7 days, just to find time to rest and take care of myself. fast forward 25 days.

I broke the flow, called up the HR at fampay, asked if I could join back. Thanks to the team at fampay, I joined work the very next monday 😄.

During the internship, I got to learn two new technologies, django and postgres, explored AWS, and wrote one feature from scratch. I also worked on UPI and payment gateways, to sum it up: it was a nexy level experience. During the final exams of semester 5, I had thought of ending my internship a bit early, but decided to stick with it deal with it. I was offered to extend my internship, which I did. anyways, results are in college GPA stands at 9.34

Not just an Intern : Year 3, Semester 6/8#

New year of 2022, new semester, and I had my end internship review meeting in January Mid. I am offered with a pre-placement offer, and a chance to extend my internship, which I gladly have.

Although I do not fit the stencil for companies visiting college for 2 month summer internships, now I do not have to worry about that, as I have a PPO in hand, with a competing package.

more?#

This is a WIP document, I do not know what comes next. it's life. projects are kept on a separate page if you're interested.

Thanks for your time!

Best

Yash Kumar Verma

Engineer