Google Open Source Summit 2022

For ~6 months, since I have been employed at Google and I was feeling burdened that I am not writing about it in public. Also, I’ve attended 2 big events so I thought to write about them, otherwise, my effort would be lost in eternity, LOL. The first one was internal called Dev Rel summit and one was external called the OpenSource@Google summit, but both were virtual. The internal was one obviously celebrated with a lot more fanfare and social engagement events and since it’s internal I can’t write much about it in my personal blog. But the external one got me to learn deeper about several techs that I have used before and some new things as well which is what I wanted to write about.

So here are some key tools that I learned about:

1. Asciinema

   This is a terminal recording tool and is much more powerful than the simple screen recording. It simulates terminal outputs (doesn’t rerun the commands), allows skipping idle terminal time and enables video sharing. One can replay an asciinema session on their terminal or just watch the video. it makes the experience much better. See for yourself:

2. Hugo

   Hugo is arguably the world’s fastest framework for building a static website. It skips DB and server connections which are needed only to store data in the backend. It uses a content folder where markdown files for all the pages need to be created and then all the related content will be automatically served as HTML files. Honestly, I use Jekyll and it works well in harmony with GitHub pages (for free) so, I won’t actually migrate to Hugo mostly because I don’t feel the need to. If you want a detailed comparison, feel free to refer to this cloudcannon’s blog.

3. Docsy

   Docsy is a theme for Hugo website and it enables building/maintaining documentation websites much easier than simply using GitHub pages. You really need to check that out, if interested in Hugo.

4. Blockly

   Blockly is a visual programming tool which is for tomorrow’s programmers. If you know Scratch, you’re already familiar with it since Scratch is based on Blockly. Blockly can be extended to teach programming or learning any Domain Specific Language, even firefighting. It can be used to teach how to follow a step-by-step approach to solving a problem. Since its extensible one can make their own Blockly by implementing commands or actions. It is a wonderful tool for teaching literally anything.

Overall, I felt like I knew a lot of tools but I am limited by time and energy to work on them at the moment. But when the time comes, these tools will be very handy to save my time for sure!