Do you remember your first coding experience, your very first “Hello world” program? Was it fun for you to see the results produced by your code? Did you feel the need to run it again, to add some more words, did you print some other messages afterwards? Well, I didn’t! I was just staying there and thinking “Wait, how does this work?!”. I wanted to understand the entire process, from high-level software, all the way down to hardware. I wanted to know what a compiler was, how the operating system manages the resources, how the text is displayed on my screen. But as my teacher explained to me back then, these were not questions to be answered in one class. That was in high-school and that’s how I made the decision to study Computer Science. And here I am, just finishing my third year of Bachelor’s Degree at Politehnica University of Bucharest, still getting answers to part of those questions. Hello, world, my name is Narcisa.

I fell in love with Linux because I noticed it gave me freedom. I was free to explore, free to be a part of the great community and even free to contribute! I decided to apply to Outreachy and focus on Linux Kernel projects and got selected as one of the interns!

I am working on the IIO driver project and my responsibility is to write a driver for an Air Quality Sensor. My mentors are Daniel Baluta and Alison Schofield. Many thanks to them for being supportive and very responsive.

For potential future Outreachy candidates: If you’re thinking to apply to Linux Kernel internships, but you are scared to press send on that very first patch (I know I was) – please don’t be! The entire Outreachy community is supportive and the experience (for me, so far) was great.

I’m very glad I’ve been selected for this internship and hope to make a valuable contribution! This is the start of my journey!