The Cathedral and the Bazaar Reflection

I enjoyed reading through the lessons in The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond and listening to other students’s explanations of their choice for their favorite lesson from the essays. For my favorite lesson from the readings, I chose the quote “Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong,”  which suggests that innovation often stems not just from finding new solutions to problems but from rethinking the very nature of the problems themselves. I felt that this quote resonated the most with me because I have tackled many problems where, after a long process of multiple failed attempts, I realized that I was looking at the problem wrong. I was glad to hear from other students who shared similar feelings and agreed that the first step to solving a problem is to take note of and analyze the problem’s requirements before starting a solution. I did not change my choice of favorite lesson after the class discussion since I did not find them relatable, but it was interesting to hear other students opinions on what makes a good programmer and what makes good design.

Bitwarden Progress

As we get closer to the end of the semester, my group continues to make good progress in our contributions to Bitwarden. We have continued to make some documentation and issue clarification contributions. However, one of my group members was able to make our first PR that contains a change to the codebase. We found an issue that dealt with the front end of the desktop application where a user was frustrated with the alignment of folders’ arrows and tags in the sidebar of the app. It was a slight misalignment, and it was very difficult to see at first, but Sam was able to locate the issue and implement a solution. Although this was a tiny fix, it still felt like an important step in our progress. The challenge that we must overcome as a group is finding more time to discuss our progress and our ideas for further contributions. I feel that an important challenge for me is to better understand Bitwarden’s codebase so that I can add more complex and larger code contributions.