Open Source & The Ripple Effect:

One of the first things I do upon arriving at the office is pull up Hacker News, Product Hunt, and Designer News via TheNews. I draw inspiration from reading about people’s experiences and stories. Yesterday, I found a PH post about a cool open source command line tool called soccer-cli by Archit Verma. When I viewed the repository on github, I was impressed by how sophisticated the easy-to-use tool was. Soccer-cli allows the user to quickly gather and display data about current soccer matches in a variety of manners. The code was easy to follow, and although I usually write front-end web applications, I was intrigued and inspired enough to try and write my own CLI.

My goal was to build a simple weather tool. Normally I wouldn’t know where to begin, but a stripped down version of soccer-cli would serve as a solid foundation. One of the greatest qualities of open source software is that it can remove the intimidation factor and inspire others to attempt similar endeavors. With the core infrastructure borrowed from soccer-cli, I began to look for API’s that I could use to accomplish my goal. I found that Forecast and Google both had well documented API’s with 1000 free calls per day each. I could use Google Maps API for geocoding location queries and the Forecast.io API for fetching the weather. Less than a day after becoming inspired by soccer-cli, I had published my CLI tool:

What’s it like out side? (wilos-cli)

I doubt Archit ever expected soccer-cli to inspire someone who lives 7800 miles away from him to give CLI development a shot. Open source code and free API access provided me with an opportunity to learn about creating CLI tools. Most importantly, this experience reminded me how important it can be to publish your code, for it can create a lasting positive ripple effect. If Archit hadn’t published soccer-cli I wouldn’t know how to make CLI tools today.

Who and what will your code inspire?