WiMLDS: Mentorship Program (Week 2)

The second week’s agenda under the Women in Machine Learning and Data Science Mentorship Program was regarding how to get started with open source contributions and the different available opportunities. My mentor, Arushi Chauhan, briefed me that for getting started with open source, the knowledge of Git is essential. There are several open-source projects available (some tech giants like Microsoft, Google, etc, also have some open-source projects) on Github. One must start looking for them according to the tech stack that they are interested in.

The world of open-source might be a bit intimidating at the start. But there are beginner-friendly or first-timer issues for beginners to get started with. My mentor briefed me regarding the advantages of contributing to open source as well, as it helps one gain some experience of how to write good code and learn proper practices for documentation as well (which also helps while working in a company). I could get my doubts regarding Google Summer of Code cleared as well. She advised me that managing GSoC along with an internship in the third year might be quite difficult and hence, the best time to apply for it is during second year. She also told me that sometimes very active and good open-source contributors often get internship/full time job opportunities from organisations like Mozilla, etc.

Considering my interest in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, my mentor advised me to start participating in Kaggle competitions as well as these competitions give you a chance to clean and visualise your data from scratch and create a model according to the problem statement. She also reminded me to continue participating in contests on Codeforces and Leetcode as it is extremely vital for clearing online rounds and technical interviews. The second week was extremely helpful as I could clear several of my doubts that I had regarding open source. I am really looking forward to what Week 3 has in store for us!