Learning Through Open Source

The Best Way to Learn a Codebase Is to Break Someone Else's

The best code I’ve ever written was shaped by code I didn’t write. Not tutorials, not books, not conference talks — other people’s production codebases, with their weird naming conventions, unexpected architectural decisions, and review comments that rewired how I think about problems. I contribute to open source projects across five languages. Not because I set out to be polyglot. Because I kept finding bugs in different ecosystems and couldn’t stop myself from tracing them to the source. Along the way, I accidentally learned more about software architecture than any course ever taught me. ...

January 8, 2026 · 7 min · Muhammad Hassan Raza
Open Source Drive-By Fixes

I Fixed a Bug in a Torrent Client I've Never Used

I fix things. Theme alignment in a torrent client I use daily. Ghost deployments in a PaaS that runs my projects. Middleware bugs in Django libraries I spotted just by reading the source code. The internet has a narrative for open source contributions: they’re career investments. “Build your personal brand.” “Get noticed by FAANG.” “Strategic contributions to high-visibility projects.” I’m not doing any of that. I just open software, see something broken, and can’t leave it alone. ...

December 10, 2025 · 4 min · Muhammad Hassan Raza