Open Source Changed How I Think About Software Engineering

A few months ago, I thought software engineering was mostly about building features that worked. If the app ran, the API responded, and the UI looked decent — I considered the job done. Then I started contributing to open source. And honestly, it completely changed the way I look at software development. Suddenly, I realized how much tutorials usually skip. Not just coding. But things like: understanding someone else’s code, writing maintainable features, reviewing pull requests, handling feedba