Talk Beginner

Fast Forward using AI and FOSS

Withdrawn

Session Description

I couldn't understand a for loop in C. I gave up on programming entirely and decided to do everything except write code. Years later, I'm building a learning platform, shipping features using AI-assisted coding, all without a dev career path.

This talk is for the confused ones, the worried ones, and the ones wondering if tech is even for them.

I'll show how AI tools (Claude Code, Ollama, Perplexity, Deepseek) are changing what a solo builder can learn and develop and where they completely fall apart.

The talk ends with a live pull request to fossunited/fossunited, a merch integration for the IndiaFOSS ticket page, built and submitted right on stage. It might break too.

Key Takeaways

You'll walk out knowing: how to use open source contributions as a career engine, how AI actually fits into a real dev workflow today, and one concrete thing you can do tonight to start.

References

https://github.com/fossunited/fossunited

Session Categories

Community

Speakers

Vishal Arya Founder | Bodhya

Vishal Arya builds Bodhya, a community-driven platform rooted in Bihar. He was the first employee at FOSS United Foundation, where he continues to volunteer with FOSS United. He believes the best career advice he never got was: contribute to FOSS/open source before you write a resume.

Reviews

The proposal is not detailed enough, and currently reads more like an AI talk. For confs, we've tried to steer clear from the "live contrib" kind of proposals because it gamifies the contribution aspect of open source. I would be more comfortable if the author instead talked about a PR they've already made, and walk the audience through that.

Reviewer #1 Not Sure

This is a relevant talk and would be a good candidate if time allows. Only worry is that it might be too generic to catch the attention of the audience. Many students don't yet feel the tension of not being interested in programming they might just be too busy in the hustle

Reviewer #2 Approved