How I turned my disaster into a huge relief

Why I was not happy* working on vscode

*Disclaimer: I have nothing against vscode, vscode community or Typescript, it was just not the right fit for me.


Did you ever feel the pressure of being forced to do something you didn't enjoy anymore?
But you had to stay, there was no escaping it, you had a goal.

That's exactly how I felt with vscode. It was exciting in the beginning, unfortunately there was one "but": it was not a perfect project for me. Typescript has never been my strength, in fact I didn't know it just 3 months ago, before I started working on vscode. 

I did not enjoy working on the project at all. It was my constant pain I had to tolerate. And here are reasons why: I wanted to learn Typescript, to contribute to something I use every day and to work on the back-end. If the first two reasons are self-explanatory, the third one need more input.


There was always an idea sitting at the back of my head that front-end was easy, back-end was more advanced. I was constantly told that at school, at work, most of my friends had the same opinion. And also all of the people I talked to about back-end vs front-end said that they hated css. When I started to work with React, I enjoyed it, it was easy and so straight forward. Even when I had some issues those were nothing compared to the back-end hell I had experienced. I tried to reject the thought that React was something I could do, I thought front-end was so easy for me because everyone can do it. It's back-end that requires more intelligence and I should head towards it.

That's exactly why I decided to go and contribute to vscode. It met all the requirements I had. Later, as I found out, it didn't meet the only big one it should: I was not happy and not obsessed about the project at all. Even finding a bug was a torture, I didn't understand half of the titles. But trying to fix those was even worse: going through tons of files, reading so much code, I still couldn't find the right spots where to start. It was so annoying, unconsciously I postponed and postponed my Releases to the last minute almost every time.


I felt jealous listening to my classmates presentations, not because working on open source was easy for them(it wasn't), but because they had passion and excitement. At least finding bugs seemed effortless and they always knew where they were going. I admired my classmates. Still I had more free time to invest into making vscode the same/similar experience. I was constantly telling myself: "It's just a beginning, it will get better, you need to get familiar with code at first". And three months later it only got worse.

At some point I decided to give up. It's not always a bad idea to come to a conclusion that it was not my place, I am not happy or helpful too much, so it was time to move on. A few of my classmates were working with React and in some places where they struggled, I saw a solution. This time I decided to contribute to something I enjoy, can contribute more and be helpful.

There was one project my classmate, Sean, is working on I spotted: addons-frontend Mozilla(AMO).
Which every his presentation I noticed how clearly I was reading the code he was showing, how I was understanding his every detail of a story. I decide to take a look at the issues and found a few interesting ones. So I decided to stick around.

How I fixed my first bug for AMO

I come to the conclusion that it's time to move on on Sunday. The day before Release 0.4 is due. I decided to abandon my bug in vscode and work on AMO. So I found this amazing "good first bug". To install the project I just need to run two commands: yarn && yarn amo:stage.

Nothing looked suspicious. I wish there was a note in the README:

"If you are a Windows user, you are doomed". 

Guess what? I am a Windows user! So I got npm error out of nowhere. I found a bug in AMO that described it.

The solution was to install Windows Subsystem for Linux... I can't describe how much pleasure** I get from installing stuff (**sarcasm). I don't even want to get into to much details here, my day was ruined, I spent 4-5 hours trying to figure it out. And even thought the process of installing Windows Subsystem was straight forward, I was getting weird errors every 5-10 minutes. It was a battle: me vs machines. I lost.

Another option was to configure a VM box: it took a while. And when it was almost done I realized that I could use my work laptop which happened to be MacBook. A few minutes later I had a built and compiled version of AMO running on my laptop.

About an hour later, after looking for a spot where a change for my issue should be implemented, I have submitted my PR. At least this story has a happy ending.

I have a hope that the hardest part is behind me, I will feel good while working with React and I will be useful to the community while learning this beautiful technology in a more advanced way.

P.S. Special thanks to my classmate Sean who decided to mentor me and help to change unit test to reflect my code changes.

P.S.S. This is a second time I have written this blog post. The first time when I have finished, I clicked "Save" button multiple times as I always did, I waited until "Saved" message had appeared and closed the tab. Switched laptops, opened my blog again and the blog post I spend about an hour and a half was gone. Today was definitely not my day.

TIL: How to use DatePickerAndroid and TimePickerAndroid in React Native?

While working with React Native, I always tried to use built-in components instead of "reinventing" the bicycle.

So today the design mockups for my project required me to write the form for a user to pick up date and time. And I went to the React Native docs page and scrolled down the bar looking what they have to offer, which component I may use. That's how I came across DatePickerAndroid and TimePickerAndroid in API's section.

Even thought docs are quite straight forward, it took we a while to figure out how to properly use it.

Part 1. DatePickerAndroid

Let's start with DatePickerAndroid: first thing we need to do is to write "onPress" type of the function. Important step is to declare is as "async" function, otherwise you will get an annoying "await is a reserved word" error message.


Another important step that I forgot about was to import DatePickerAndroid from 'react-native' package.

In this case I have assigned data to directly to the state, if you would like to do the same DO NOT forget to add ".bind(this)", when you are calling your function: "random.datePicker.bind(this)".

You can use this function on any element that supports "onPress" property.

Another big challenge is styling DatePickerAndroid. Currently it cannot be done directly through React Native, but we can mess up a little bit with Android code:
"<project>\android\app\src\main\res\values\styles.xml" file in your React Native project.

Let's change the color scheme of the component!

If you want to use the dark theme simply change Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar to Theme.AppCompat and Theme.AppCompat.Light.Dialog to Theme.AppCompat.

Final result:

Part 2. TimePickerAndroid

TimePickerAndroid is similar to DatePickerAndroid, so once you figured out how to use one of them, you know how to use both:

As you can see even code and strategy how we are going to use it are the same, timePicker may be used as "onPress" function as well.

Even styling would be similar:

And if you want to have a darker theme you would have to perform all the same modifications as with DatePickerAndroid.

Final result:

Congratulations! Now you know how to make your form more user-friendly and do less validation!

Release 0.3: Status Report

It's almost impossible to control how much work load you have.
These 2 weeks were super busy in my semester: midterms, assignments, labs, deadlines...

At some point working on my bug for Release 0.3 I realized that I don't have enough time to finish it for this Release. So it's work in progress; I was able to create a visible command on command pallet and now I need to work on functionality:

That will be done for Release 0.4. Meanwhile I was trying to fix this bug, I was working on localization for VS Code, here is what I accomplished:

In Transifex, your translation should be voted and reviewed by 2 people to be accepted, so that's not all the words I have localized, but only those that will appear on actual VS code Ukrainian and Russian instances.

I was also contacted by Andy Alt, who is working on a new project, to translate his project to Russian!

It felt nice to be remembered, I have already helped him with Russian and Ukrainian translations for rmw project in the last semester, so I was familiar with the process and agreed with no hesitations. So about 5-6 hours later I have submitted a PR to hldig project.

According to the README.md, "hl://Dig is a fork of ht://Dig, a world-wide-web search system for an intranet or small internet."

At first I thought that I won't do much for this release. But at the end of the day I translated about 300 lines worth of messages for Andy, 456 strings were approved and now are seen by Russian and Ukrainian VS Code users and I was able to create a "dummy" blah command in VS Code command pallet.

Release 0.2: How I fixed my issue

After the battle with my antivirus for a right to run locally compiled version of Visual Studio Code the most fun part started: fixing the issue.

It is always hard to start working in a new area of code or on something you have not done before. So it all starts with the research. My issue contained a few code pointers, but it was also about 1 year old, so those code pointers where only partly useful.

I took a look at the one of them, but that line didn't even exist at this point. God bless people who write comments! It was easy to identify that part of the code that was originally pointed out was this one:

It's an actual "Collapse All" functionality, I will be using in future. To find another code pointer I had to use good old git blame, but as I found out where it was pointing, I could not figure out why that piece of code was important (and I still can't, so maybe that is a reason why my pull request is Work In Progress and is not merged).

It is crazy how much code I got familiar with in "debug/debug console" while trying to find where the issue was supposed to get fixed. The first piece of code that popped-up was located here and looked like the place where the "neighbor" button "Clear All" was initialized:


Spoiler: wrong place... As I was trying to mimic "Clear All" button initialization, I got a better idea: why not to mimic the actual class, since those two are different. That's exactly what I did:


It was a good idea, as I found out later.

Still... Something was missing button did not magically appear on the screen. So I found another place where "Clear All" button was added to the Debug Console. I decided to try to add my button:


And after that I finally saw my "button", it was an empty placeholder without an icon! It felt like a real miracle. So it was just a matter of finding the right icon and CSS classes at this point.


And finally I got exactly what I wanted:

Even in both light and dark color schemes:

It took quite a long time to get exactly to the place of a change, but as soon as I found out where I need to make changes, fixing this issue become a pleasure.

UPDATE:
I have got a response in my pull request asking to remove button from the title area and add it to context menu. So after all I had to go with the original idea I had:


So here is a gif of what vscode community actually wanted:

Now it is just a matter of time for my PR to be merged!

Release 0.2: Antivirus vs VS code

These 2 weeks I have been looking for and fixing this issue.

Recently my antivirus got updated... I am using Bitdefender and until this release I have never had problems with it. So one day when I had some time I decided to start working on my  issue. 

In my case the first step was reproducing the bug. So I tried to run vs code and I run into this error:

             [21:02:51] Using gulpfile C:\...\gulpfile.js

             [21:02:51] Starting 'clean-electron'...

             [21:02:51] Finished 'clean-electron' after 6.22 ms 

             [21:02:51] Starting 'electron'...

                ↓ electron-v1.7.9-win32-x64.zip [==============------] 68%events.js:183

                   throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event

                   ^

             Error: read ECONNRESET

                at _errnoException (util.js:1024:11)

                at TLSWrap.onread (net.js:615:25)

           [21:08:18] Syncronizing built-in extensions... 

           [21:08:18] You can manage built-in extensions with the --builtin flag

           [21:08:18] [marketplace] ms-vscode.node-debug@1.21.1 ✔︎

           [21:08:18] [marketplace] ms-vscode.node-debug2@1.21.0 ✔︎

     '".build\electron\Code - OSS.exe"' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

      operable program or batch file.

So after a few hours of research on StackOverflow, I wasn't getting anywhere. It was a lucky coincidence and I decided to check my antivirus. 

It always gives me million notifications about what is happening in the system, but not this time... My Bitdefender just silently blocked executables needed to run VS code.

It took me a while to disable blocking of all the files I needed to run, but I finally managed to restore all the files and finally run my instance of Visual Studio code.

Tip for future: if something goes wrong and you don't have an explanation, check your overprotective antivirus.

TIL: React Native and Android. Tutorial Edition

This week I have been working on React Native Android application for one of my courses, so I decided to write a tutorial with everything you need to know to get started with React Native.

You can find the full code from this tutorial on GitHub.

I am not planning to go through setup, you can check this blog (it's only for Windows, here is one for Linux and for Mac).

So what happens next after running your app?

Your main page is App.js, so let's take a look what's going on there.

Everything that is under render() function's return is your view, so that's the part you will modify the most, this structure reminds me a little bit of HTML.

On the next few lines we can see styles,

I prefer to keep structure and styles separated in different files.
So let's do that!

To include your stylesheet in App.js you need to export module from your styles file and don't forget to import all the dependencies in your styles file:

In your App.js you have to import this file and use it as a "library":

One of the hardest parts (at least for me) is configuring navigation from page to page.
To add navigation to the project, you have to modify index.js file:


First of all you need to import StackNavigator and create constant property to pass navigation property to it, later on we will use that property to move user from component to component:

Now you need to configure StackNavigator component and make it main/first screen by passing reactNavigation property we have just created. And we need to register StackNavigator component, now when you need to redirect user to the next screen you will use "App" title and your application will know what you are talking about.


Now let's create a few buttons and extra component, so we can play around with our navigation and don't forget to import Button component:


It is highly important to add ".bind(this)" when you call your function, otherwise this.props and this.state won't be available in your function.

So here is my Next.js page:


Now you need to add Next component to index.js file, so it can be accessible by App component. Don't forget to import the page first:

And add the page to StackNavigator:

So let's our app and see how it works:

As you can see Navigation has added a bar at the top of the screen, it's not pretty, so here is a solution on how to can get rid of it. You need to add a few lines in index.js file in you StackNavigator component:


And here is how the app looks now:

I prefer to work with Emulator to work on styling and components, because it's easy to reload and see the changes almost instantly. But sometimes it's important to know how your app would feel on the actual phone.

Here is how you can easily run your android app on your phone.

First of all you need to configure development mode on your mobile device. This configuration may vary for each model, so I am not including it here.
Next step is to connect your phone to your computer using USB cable.
Now to run your application you should bundle it using the following command first (you have to rerun this one every time you make changes in your code):

$ react-native bundle --platform android --dev false --entry-file index.js

--bundle-output android/app/src/main/assets/index.android.bundle
--assets-dest android/app/src/main/res

Now you can run:

$ react-native run-android

And enjoy your awesome application on the phone!

You can find the full code from this tutorial on GitHub.

How to contribute to open source without coding skills?

The first thought that you have right now is probably: "It's not possible, she does not know what she is talking about". But give me a chance to prove my point.

If you know languages, you can contribute to open source projects. It doesn't matter if you know "human" or programming languages. Most of the big projects are in need of localization. And if you know more than one "human" language: it's your chance to shine! 

I am a localization contributor as well. I have recently started to translate for Visual Studio Code, so this is what you need to do to join the community:

Step 1: Get a transifex account (it's completely free).

Step 2: Request access to the project.

Step 3: Start contributing!

The website has user-friendly interface, but if you need detailed instruction on how to get started once you have joined an organization, here it is:

1) From your home page go to "Dashboard"

2) Select the project you want to work on

3) Click on "Translate"

4) If translating is available in a few languages you know, you will be asked to select one

5) You will also be asked to select a resource, it is just a subsection of a project

6) On the left you will see a few subcategories of strings

7) On the right side there is a panel where you can suggest translation or vote for one

I have noticed that community is in need of contributors. To have your translation be accepted you need to have 1 more vote from another contributor. I have translated a few strings and most of them were not reviewed due to lack of contributors.

And the whole translating process it quite pleasant. It feels like playing a game and may even be addictive. I noticed that when I get involved: it's hard to stop.

Even if you don't want to translate strings you may start as a reviewer, just get involved with terminology and you will be a great fit to translators' community! And don't worry, you will be recognized and even included in release notes under "thank you" header!


Just imagine how many people will see our name and will benefit from 20-30 minutes of your time!

Some helpful links:

• What and how to contribute?
• VS Code Localization Project
• Report an issue