🎄🎁 Advent of Open Source: Celebrating 24 Days of Personal Projects

Sharing the stories behind my open source projects, from tiny utilities to complex libraries.

Last updated on 2024-12-29 3 min read Technology, Open-Source, Advent

I originally posted this series of posts on LinkedIn between 1 December and 24 December 2024.

One of my biggest passions is writing code that solves real problems and sharing it with others who might face similar challenges. There’s something deeply satisfying about turning a frustrating situation into a reusable solution that helps not just me, but potentially anyone else encountering the same obstacle.

As we enter the festive month of December, I wanted to try something different. Like many open source maintainers, I spend countless hours creating and maintaining software that others use in their daily work. The nature of open source is interesting - when things work well, it’s silent, but when issues arise, that’s when you hear from users.

This December, I decided to celebrate and share the stories behind my open source projects. Over the next 24 days, I’ll highlight one project each day - from tiny utilities that took a few hours to complex libraries representing years of work. These projects span a wide range of topics: from package dependency management to mathematical optimization algorithms, from parallel programming tools to home automation, from backup software to personal finance tools - and even code that makes one reflect on the finiteness of life itself. Some of these projects serve thousands of users, while others might only have me as their sole user. But each project has a story, a reason why it was created, and lessons learned along the way.

Why do this? Open source is mostly thankless work - users typically appear only when something breaks, rarely when everything works smoothly. December is a month of celebration and giving, so I decided to celebrate these contributions, however small or large. Each project is, in its own way, a gift to the developer community - perhaps a gift no one explicitly asked for, but one I hoped would help someone somewhere. Of course, none of this would be possible without standing on the shoulders of thousands of other open source developers.

For each project, I’ll share:

📖 The origin story - what problem it solves and why I created it
🔧 Technical highlights and interesting implementation details
📊 Usage statistics and community impact
🎯 Challenges faced and lessons learned
🔮 Where the project is heading

I hope this advent calendar provides insight into the world of open source maintenance and perhaps inspires others to share their own stories or start their own projects.

Let’s begin with Day 1, right after this post!