Open Source: My Journey
In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny.
— Linus Torvalds
If you ask any of my friends or colleagues, they'll tell you I'm a HUGE advocate for open source. However, I wasn't always that enthusiastic about it. What surprises most people is that I didn't start contributing until I quit my corporate job and went back to grad school.
What got me to this point was a search for something that combined the creative freedom of academia with the real world impact of industry work.
From Academia to Industry 📚
In undergrad, programming felt wide open. Professors gave you basic requirements, but how you met them was up to you. Want to try a new framework? Build something from scratch just to understand how it works? Implement state of the art research? Go for it. That kind of exploration was not only allowed, it was encouraged. However, most of those projects usually ended up in forgotten GitHub repos, with no real users or long term impact.
Then came industry. Suddenly, my code had real users and real consequences. That was exciting, and in many ways, fulfilling. But the creative freedom I had in school quickly disappeared. I worked within fixed tech stacks, occasionally encountered legacy systems, and spent most of my time resolving Jira tickets. Business priorities like deadlines, IT restrictions, and profitability drove most decisions. The work had impact, but it didn’t always leave room for curiosity or growth.
I learned a lot during that time such as how to ship reliable code, work on large teams, and maintain systems at scale. But eventually, I felt boxed in. I missed the ability to explore new ideas, experiment, and build things just for the joy of it.
Finding Creative Freedom Again 🎨
That’s what led me back to grad school. I wanted to step off the roadmap and find my own direction again. For the first time in a while, I had space to explore. But I didn’t want to jump back into building throwaway class projects, I wanted to build software people actually used.
That’s what drew me to open source.
To me, open source is the perfect middle ground. Like school, you get the freedom to explore, choose what you work on, and dive deep into topics that interest you. But unlike school, your code can have real world impact. Other developers build on top of it, give feedback, and rely on it to solve real problems.
Want a feature? Open an issue and start a conversation. Have a solid idea? Submit a pull request. Curious about a new tool, language, or framework? Find a project and dive in.
Why It Stuck 🧠
Open source also exposed me to new ways of thinking. In a day job, it’s easy to fall into routine, using the same tools and solving the same kinds of problems. Open source breaks that cycle. You collaborate with people outside your usual circles, solve unfamiliar problems, and learn from contributors around the world.
For me, it’s not just about code, it’s about growth, creativity, connection, and continued learning. That’s why open source has become such an important part of my journey.