
Let&#8217;s talk about 2018. This happens to be my first year in review. I am reflecting on my past year, not only to share with others but more importantly to keep a track for myself. I want to be able to weigh and evaluate myself in the future, to know where I come from and how far I have come. With that said, let&#8217;s start with the review. ✌

## 🤔 An Year to Remember

2018 was a great year for me. I got to learn and experience a lot, which has certainly made me more capable than I was before. A lot of things changed this year, my life took a new turn. So much so that 2018 will always remain one of the most significant years of my life.

## 🙇‍♀️ A Busy One

In the first two quarters of this year, I was as busy as a beaver. With high school graduation and entrance tests of universities at hand, there were a lot of things on my plate. There was a lot of grinding and hustling, but it was all worth it. 😀

## 🙌 I Started University

Yes, the most important thing that happened in 2018, was the start of university life. I have always had an enthusiasm for software, and with that in mind, I applied to a bunch of top tier universities of the country. They included UET, FAST, ITU, COMSATS, NUST, IST and more. Alhumdulilah, I was blessed enough to be selected in all of them. 🙌

I weighed the pros and cons of each university and just chose what suited me the best. I knew that what matters in computer science are your own skills. So I got into the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore. I am enrolled in the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department, and I&#8217;m pretty happy with my decision.

## WordPress

Like now, I was trying to learn as much as possible in 2018. WordPress remained in my focus. I learned the development of themes and coded a few plugins as well. It was a demanding learning curve, but I will recommend it for every beginner developer trying to find a medium to start from.

## JavaScript

Another target in 2018 was to get a grasp on JavaScript. I took [Brian Holt][1]&#8216;s course on [FrontEndMasters][2] which was an introduction to Web Development. It covered HTML, CSS and more importantly JavaScript which I was interested in. As a beginner in JavaScript, it helped a lot and gave me the start I just needed.

## React.js

Next up, I decided to learn React.js, and that is what I am doing these days, hoping to cover it soon. I am taking a couple of awesome React courses on [EggHead.io][3] and [FrontEndMasters][2] (including one from [B.Holt][1], again). In other news, my tweet got mentioned in their website. 😍

## 🤷‍♂️ I Switched to Linux

After messing around for some time with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), I figured that it was the need of time to switch to Linux. I am getting used to Linux, and so far I love it. Although WSL is promising and Windows 10 has improved many things, but it still needs more refinement IMO. 👀

## 🗣 Meetups

In&nbsp;October, I attended a Git and JAMstack conference by TheDevCouple team called TheOpenDevCon&nbsp;which&nbsp;went&nbsp;great. I wrote about it [here][4]. Give it a read.
In 2018, I completed my second Hacktoberfest challenge which is always fun.🙃

That is it from 2018. I am positive about 2019 being a decisively successful year for me. Fingers crossed! 🤞

 [1]: https://frontendmasters.com/teachers/brian-holt/
 [2]: https://frontendmasters.com/
 [3]: https://egghead.io/
 [4]: https://ahmadbilal.dev/theopendevcon-jamstack-conference-by-thedevcouple-team/


2018—The Year in Review


I have just been accepted in the Google Summer of Code 2019 and I couldn't be happier, Yay! 😄 This comes to light as my biggest career achievement so far as well as a huge opportunity to learn and grow further.

## What is GSoC?

Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on bringing more student developers into open source software development. Students work with an open source organization on a 3-month programming project during their break from school. During which, each student developer is continuously guided by mentors from the respective organization.

It gives students the platform to build collaborative working skills, get support from mentors, learn skills that matter and get a one-time referral for interviews at Google while getting stipends up to 6k USD.

**But,** it is really the integration with the open source community and the mentoring organization that appeals to me the most.

## Creative Commons

To be accepted, you need to submit a proposal to the organization you want to collaborate with. After going through all participating organizations, I found myself interested in one of the project ideas of Creative Commons. That is when I became involved with the CC community and decided to write my proposal for it. I&#8217;ll be sharing this whole process in detail in another article for future GSoC aspirants. 🤞

As a first-year student, it was a time-taking and consistency-demanding work. Credits to my elder brother [Ahmad Awais][1] and his wife [Maedah Batool][2] for keeping me motivated and never letting me give up. It wouldn&#8217;t have been possible at all without them.

Finally, my worthy mentors Timid Robot, Hugo Solar and Kriti Godey helped me improve the proposal before giving me a good-to-go sign. Participants can submit proposals to three different organizations but I kept my focus on [one][3] and was lucky enough to get selected. I was in total disbelief when I saw my name among the selected students.

It is a huge opportunity indeed, and I will do everything to make the most out of it. Looking forward to a great summer! 🙌


I have just been accepted in the Google Summer of Code 2019 🥳

I am now a Student Developer at Google Summer of Code 2019

We, TheDevCouple team, celebrate open source by arranging a number of interactive conferences and meetups every year. Meetups like these are opportunities for developers to meet, interact and network with the speakers and other developers. With the month of October ongoing, it was time for the yearly Hacktoberfest meetup.



## &nbsp;👌 Hacktoberfest

Ahmad Awais&nbsp;started off the talk with Hacktoberfest 2019. It is the sixth annual&nbsp;Hacktoberfest, a month-long celebration of open-source software. This is the deal: You have to make a total of five Pull Requests. These contributions are open to everyone and can be done to any project on GitHub. Once you are done, you’ll receive a cool limited edition Hacktoberfest T-shirt and stickers.

## &nbsp;👉 Hacktoberfest OneDevMinute

If you want to contribute to open source and participate in this Hacktoberfest, do NOT miss this&nbsp;#OneDevMinute by Ahmad Awais. You can improve an open-source project’s documentation, refactor code, or gift that projects a new logo design — just participate and celebrate open source this October.

## 🦈 Digital Ocean

After the Hacktoberfest session, Ahmad moved on to&nbsp;Digital Ocean. He shared why is it one of the most go-to cloud platforms for developers & teams. One can deploy, manage, and scale cloud applications faster and more efficiently with it. The audience had several queries about its differentiating features and Functions as a Service (FaaS) with Digital Ocean.

💯 Digital Ocean powers Hacktoberfest and is also a prime sponsor of this meetup.

## 🔴 GraphQL

Next, was an introduction to GraphQL. Ahmad first shared why the concept of APIs was easier to understand but hard to explain. But he had a fun interpretation up his sleeve. Imagine you are ordering some food form a menu in a restaurant. There needs to be some link between the kitchen and your order. That link is API.

GraphQL is a language and a server-side runtime for building and querying APIs. It provides a complete description of your API. It enables you to get exactly what you asked for in the API query. Moreover, you can specify calls to multiple REST APIs in a single query which is pretty efficient.

## 🥞 JAMstack

Finally, Ahmad moved on to personal branding. While replying to “Why should we have a blog?”, he shared how blogging for 16 years has helped him in all kinds of ways. Ahmad demonstrated how JAMstack could help set up a blog on a domain of your name.JAMstack is the combination of JavaScript, APIs, and prebuilt Markup to form a web development architecture. Here any front-end framework of JavaScript, say React, handles client-side functionality. While all the database and server-side tasks are carried out by reusable APIs. Finally, the markup is prebuilt at deploy time using a site generator such as Gatsby.

## ？Questions

Ending the meetup was a good Q&A session. This was when more targeted discussions, sharing of ideas and opinions took place. Many attendees approached Ahmad to discuss their ideas, possibilities and how they can streamline them.

## 🍕 Refreshments & Swag

This was the fun part. Everyone got their hands on swag, stickers, cheat sheets and guides sent by our sponsors. A special thank you to DigitalOcean! To top it all, there was fresh pizza with drinks for everyone.

Meetups like these are opportunities for developers to meet, interact and network with the speakers and other developers. With the month of October ongoing, it was time for the yearly Hacktoberfest meetup.

Hacktoberfest 2019 Meetup — DigitalOcean, JAMstack, & Everything Else!

👋 Hello out there. Just in case you haven&#8217;t perceived already, I am Ahmad Bilal. This happens to be my first post for this blog. Let&#8217;s do this, shall we?



To start with, I had to choose a domain name for my first personal blog. Having realized that my name wasn&#8217;t exactly rare, it took some time. Some rightly say that giving names is one of the two hardest things in Computer Science. Anyhow, thanks to my [brother][1], I soon got lucky enough to find a befitting one ahmadbilal.dev.&nbsp; Now, let me introduce myself briefly.

At the time of this writing, I am a Computer Science student and an aspiring Web Developer. With that said, my primary focus at the moment is WordPress as a learning platform.

Back in the day, I was a curious kid. I was interested in anything that was related to software and web. I was eight when after learning web development, I created my first website.

In the process, I was inspired by many, with the biggest inspiration being my elder brother&nbsp;Ahmad Awais. I would watch him doing stuff on computers, only to repeat the same later. His work fascinated me, and I spawned an obsession. Fast-forward ten years, and I have recognized Computer Science as the profession of my choice.

I can&#8217;t think of a particular niche as of now. Nonetheless, granted that it is my personal blog, I will be sharing my projects, what I learn, how I learn, things that worked fine and things that didn&#8217;t. Hopefully, people can learn from what I go through. Watch this space!

Peace! ✌️

 [1]: http://ahmadawais.com

To start with, I had to choose a domain name for my first personal blog.

Let’s Do This!

Every year,&nbsp;[Ahmad Awais][1],&nbsp;[Maedah Batool][2]&nbsp;and their team organize several meetups/conferences aimed at upskilling the local community here in Pakistan. 2018 was no different as well, with the series of events starting from&nbsp;[WordPress & JavaScript Meetup Lahore][3], held in January. This October, they arranged another conference,&nbsp;[#TheOpenDevCon2018][4]. I was lucky enough to attend it. Here is what happened, in detail.



## Meetup Particulars

It mostly revolved around JavaScript, APIs, and static Markup as well as celebrating open-source on the 5th edition of Hacktoberfest. The programme also incorporated talks and a workshop about JAMstack.

The University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore was the venue for this conference. The audience substantially comprised of CS, CE and EE students. Whether they were absolute beginners or developers with intermediate skills, there was something for every one of them to learn.

## Talk by Ahmad Awais


[Ahmad][6]&nbsp;started the conference with a brief introduction and told everyone why he loved teaching and delivering talks. He considers it his way of giving back to the community.&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;is a hyperactive open sourcerer. He advocates open source wherever and whenever he gets the chance to do so.

Building a project is good, but creating a community around it is even better. And there is no better way to do so than to open source. He shared why every aspiring developer should start contributing to open source right now. He even declared contributing to open source a life-changing decision of his life.


### Git/GitHub

Next,&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;gave an excellent fundamental understanding of Git. He also demonstrated the primary commands and their usage. While maintaining an entertaining atmosphere by cracking silly jokes and puns, Ahmad also gave useful resources to learn Git. That being done, the audience was thoroughly educated about how to create a pull request, make the commits and push it.


After giving the intro to Github/Digital Ocean. He told the audience about the 5th edition of Hacktoberfest, a month-long celebration of open source. And how anyone can earn a free limited edition T-shirt and other goodies by creating five pull requests.


## JAMstack

The next part of the talk was about JAMstack. It is a web development architecture established on JavaScript, APIs and prebuilt Markup.

### JavaScript

“Why JavaScript?&nbsp;” One of the biggest dilemmas of web developers is figuring out which language to learn.&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;explained how Javascript is easy to pick up and fun. You can start coding it right inside your browser without setting up a developer environment, which is a reason beginners find it more comfortable.

Moreover, it can also be used on the server-side with node. JavaScript is everywhere. All this, while still ensuring highly paid gigs in the industry.

### APIs

The section about APIs was really a fun part.&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;shared why the concept of APIs was easier to understand but hard to explain. But he had a fun interpretation up his sleeve. Imagine you are ordering some food form a menu in a restaurant. There needs to be some link between the kitchen and your order. API is that critical link. It can’t be that simple.&nbsp;

  * “Kitchen” is the server.
  * “Menu” includes requests to be made to the server.
  * “Waiter” is the API here.

### Markup

Markups are converted into HTML via build tools. Making sure that the attendees do not feel overwhelmed,&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;performed a live project.&nbsp;[Here][7]&nbsp;is it’s demo. It included building a simple static blog using Gatsby, Netlify, and MOAAR.


### Gatsby

[GatsbyJS][8]&nbsp;is a modern site generator for React. Credits to its impressive documentation and easy to find resources, you can build super fast static websites and much more.&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;demonstrated all the steps from installing it to creating a Gatsby site.

### Netlify

[Netlify][9]&nbsp;is a JAMstack hosting but a lot more than that. It delivers an all-in-one workflow to establish and control modern web projects. Some of its impressive features are:

  * &nbsp;Serverless functions
  * &nbsp;Automatic deployment/Cache invalidation
  * &nbsp;HTTPS, Custom domain, DNS Management
  * &nbsp;Authentication signups, logins, & pass recovery and so on

## Personal Branding

Lastly,&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;concluded the topic by emphasizing personal branding.&nbsp;[Ahmad][6]&nbsp;likes to put forward real-life scenarios to make discussions more gripping. This time he mentioned a situation, which compared the approach of a nerd and a relentless brainstormer towards naming an assignment.

The purpose was to educate the audience about personal branding, and why a professional approach to branding yourself is critical. No wonder, “naming things” is regarded as one of the hardest things in Computer Science.

He showed how the tools as mentioned above could help set up a blog on a domain of your name. Undoubtedly, being known as a professional is one of the most significant advantages one can have today.


## Q/A Session

Consider this. Meetups are organized with two targets in mind; one is to impart new knowledge to the participants so that they get to learn something new. The other one is to interact and connect with like-minded people. Many meetups may cover the first objective, but the second one is even more important.

This conference, being a large scale version of a meetup included an interactive discussion and Q&A session covering both the objectives mentioned above.&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;took a surprise quiz as well. He asked industry focused questions from the attendees.


The answerers were appreciated by presenting them with free domains. Besides, there were cool stickers, swag and what not. Some of the attendees approached&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;after the talk to ask questions and discuss ideas. Many were interested in adding to open source software. It turned out to be a reasonably healthy discussion with&nbsp;[Ahmad][1]&nbsp;guiding them and showing them the way to go in the future.

## Hands-On Workshop On Linode by Ashar Irfan

In the next round of the conference,&nbsp;[Ashar Irfan][12]&nbsp;— Lead Developer at WP White Security — conducted a hands-on workshop on&nbsp;[Linode][13]. Linode is one of the finest Cloud Hosting providers in the industry, and their services are just for everyone. Whether you are a developer, a designer or an absolute beginner launching a Linode cloud server is easier than ever. They offer the fastest hardware and network in the industry with scalable environments.

The prime focus of this workshop was teaching students about how to generate a static website using GatsbyJS and hosting it on the&nbsp;[Linode][13]&nbsp;server. Ashar began with explaining the initial setup which includes setting up a Linode server and hosting a Gatsby powered website.

Ahmad had already explained the creation of a static site with GatsbyJS, so it was easier for students to catch up with the Linode server setup. Later, during the question-answer session, he also explained how you could move your WordPress blog to Linode. Since almost 25% of the audience had their blogs powered with WordPress, so the concept of hosting static sites piqued their interests.

## Hands-On Workshop With pudl by Maedah Batool


The final proceedings of the conference was an all-girl affair.&nbsp;[Maedah Batool][2]&nbsp;conducted a hands-on workshop presenting her newly-built static site generator called&nbsp;[pudl][14]. Being a maintainer of&nbsp;_#GirlsWhoCode_&nbsp;and&nbsp;_#ReactJSLadies_&nbsp;local meetup chapters, her workshop witnessed an audience of more than 30 girls.

[**pudl**][14]&nbsp;is a JavaScript-based static site generator for quick static site prototyping. She explained how quickly pudl could handle a good deal of automation for your development projects by writing simple Gulp tasks. Some students were new to pug and Sass, so she explained these two in detail.

Later she showed how pudl performs:

  * Live reloads browser with BrowserSync.
  * CSS: Sass to CSS conversion, error catching, Autoprefixing, and CSS minification.
  * Watches files for changes in CSS.
  * Corrects the line endings.
  * InjectCSS instead of browser page reload
  * Sends message notification to you.
  * Prevents pipe breaking caused by errors.


## Refreshments & Swag

The conference was sponsored by&nbsp;[Github][15],&nbsp;[Digital Ocean][16],&nbsp;[Twilio][17]&nbsp;and&nbsp;[Linode][18]. They had sent some pretty cool stickers, swag, Git cheat sheets and guides for all the attendees. The audience also enjoyed refreshments, burgers, and drinks.


## &nbsp;Resources

  * &nbsp;[Download and install Git][19]
  * &nbsp;Resources to&nbsp;[learn Git][20]
  * &nbsp;Learn more about&nbsp;[APIs][21]
  * &nbsp;Learn everything about Gatsby with this&nbsp;[Gatsby tutorial][22]
  * &nbsp;[How to Generate a Static Website Using GatsbyJS & Host the Website on Linode Server?][23]
  * &nbsp;[More features of Netlify][24]
  * **&nbsp;How and where to work on Open Source projects?**
  * Watch Ahmad’s&nbsp;**[#OneDevMinute][25]**, in which he explains how to do it.
  * **[Ahmad’s Hacktoberfest GitHub Repository][20]&nbsp;**can be ideal to start with. It has 5 branches and 58 contributors who have pushed 350 commits so far.
  * More information about #Hacktoberfest can be found on&nbsp;[its official site.][26]


## &nbsp;Meetup Details

  * **Conference Site**:&nbsp;[2018.TheOpenDev.com][27]
  * Topic:&nbsp;Keynote about JAMstack and Hacktoberfest open source.
  * Sub-Topics:&nbsp;Git, Digital Ocean, Personal Branding/Portfolio&nbsp;[Gatsbyjs][28]&nbsp;with&nbsp;[Netlify,][29]&nbsp;API Servers&nbsp;[Linode][30]&nbsp;&&nbsp;[DigitalOcean.][31]
  * Time:&nbsp;12 PM to 3 PM
  * DATE:&nbsp;Sunday 28 October 2018.
  * Venue:&nbsp;UET Lahore, PK.
  * Meetup.com Link: Event for&nbsp;[TheOpenDevCon 2018][32]
  * &nbsp;Keynote Slides by Ahmad Awais:&nbsp;[TheOpenDevCon2018.AhmadAwais.com][33]
  * Slides by Ashar Irfan:&nbsp;[Generating A Static Website Using GatsbyJS and Hosting It on Linode Server][11]

 [1]: https://twitter.com/AhmadAwais.com
 [2]: https://twitter.com/MaedahBatool
 [3]: https://thedevcouple.com/wordpress-javascript-meetup-lahore-2018
 [4]: https://2018.theopendev.com/
 [5]: https://theopendevcon2018.ahmadawais.com/
 [6]: https://twitter.com/MrAhmadAwais
 [7]: https://uet-jamstack.netlify.com/
 [8]: https://www.gatsbyjs.org/
 [9]: https://www.netlify.com/
 [10]: https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video_thumb/Dqk9m0nXQAEoBcx?format=jpg&name=small
 [11]: https://eager-elion-056a93.netlify.com/1
 [12]: https://twitter.com/MrAsharIrfan
 [13]: https://welcome.linode.com/
 [14]: https://github.com/MaedahBatool/pudl
 [15]: https://github.com/
 [16]: https://digitalocean.com/
 [17]: https://twilio.com/
 [18]: https://linode.com/
 [19]: https://git-scm.com/downloads
 [20]: https://github.com/ahmadawais/hacktoberfest
 [21]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7wmiS2mSXY
 [22]: https://www.gatsbyjs.org/tutorial/
 [23]: https://gist.github.com/asharirfan/9343314e8329cba662123b24fb40b523
 [24]: https://www.netlify.com/features/
 [25]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnCfVxSw3ak
 [26]: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/#projects
 [27]: https://t.co/qoG1mjMGMz
 [28]: https://twitter.com/gatsbyjs
 [29]: https://twitter.com/Netlify
 [30]: https://twitter.com/linode
 [31]: https://twitter.com/digitalocean
 [32]: https://www.meetup.com/DigitalOceanLahore/events/255659892/
 [33]: https://t.co/c7vEANls7D

It mostly revolved around JavaScript, APIs, and static Markup as well as celebrating open-source on the 5th edition of Hacktoberfest.

Hi, I'm
Ahmad Bilal.

Full Stack Web Engineer.

Blog

Sharing my experiences, progamming guides, learning curves and more.

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Hi, I'm Ahmad Bilal.