Working on open source is truly different from working in a company
Actually I should revert the title. It is not my first time to work on someone's code. I worked on existing code base in a co-op position. But I still feel like it's first time because it's different. In the work, I couldn't write much since it's a large code base and I didn't know much about all pieces of functionality. So usually I wrote a few lines of code at a time to fix a bug or improve something. I had to spend much time to figure out who the code works and was in the pressure to think about side effect and what I was potentially missing as it could affect a lot of people if I miss something. However, this open source experience gives me much more freedom and less pressure. Don't get me wrong. I also felt a great accomplishment when my code is shipped to production. Although it's just a few lines.
Javascript is fun and concise, but still want to write better Java
This week's task is to choose someone's repo and add markdown translation functionality to existing repo. It's a very straightforward assignment. Instead of working with the same partner, I decided to look at more projects to learn something from it. Unfortunately, no one used Java. As of now I see some amazing people wrote it with Go, Rust, C++. But mostly Javascript. I briefly checked all of other classmates' repo. Not like my Java's overloaded functions, code written in Javascript was so concise and pretty, thanks to rich set of library and framework. I tried to refactor my code and hide detailed implementation as much as possible. I still need to reduce many duplicate code. I wish I could write much concise good looking Java code.
Learning from others' code is great!
Going back to Javascript, a couple repos caught my eyes as they broke down the code nicely. Eventually I decided to work on Rohan's repo and he welcomed me too. My part is adding markdown heading and link parsing functionality. But he has another partner to add a feature to translate markdown to html which is a bit complicating since I had to develop a sub-feature without knowing how someone else is implementing main feature which is converting markdown to html.
Decided to do same feature, but it's not competition
So I needed to have my own way of filtering md files and reading the content of the file to implement and test my features. I thought about making a hard-coded string variable to simulate md file. However, I decided to implement my own markdown convert functionality as I want to do more practice with this project. Although I had to spend some time to pull the updated repo and redo my work, it was a good try to implement the feature. I will add this feature to my SSG later too. As a contributor, I tried not to change the original style and format. I enjoyed the thinking process to reduce the amount of change as much as possible. I think it's another fun aspect of programming.
How am I supposed to conquer regex?
The hardest part was to figure out a way to parse markdown link into html. I had to find a regular expression to do this. But this is a way more complicated than anything that I tried before. I searched stackoverflow and many blogs. But it was hard to find one that satisfies my test cases. I tested many regex and finally I found one that is working for my cases.
const regex = /\[(.*?)\]\((.*?)\)/g;
line.replaceAll(regex, '<a href="$2">$1</a>')
It may not be the perfect regex as I don't have many test cases now. At least, it's working even for a string that has multiple links in it. So, it's time to send my PR!
Writing PR message cautiously
When I commit to my own repo, I don't worry much. I know my code and I can quickly modify things that shouldn't be in my repo. But this is someone else's repo. Obviously I became very cautious and tried to write good PR message. Once I completed sending my PR, a couple of things that I should have mentioned came up in my mind. It's too late. But I will write a more careful PR comment next time.
I wish someone also would send me a PR refactoring my code in a much concise way so that I can learn from it. Now I'm also adding a markdown converting feature to my SSG. I will be very happy to use my regex in my Java code!
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