Contributor Spotlight: Dhruv Soni
Hey guys! I am Dhruv Soni, Employee Number 04 I guess at Fireproof as a Connectors Engineer. Born and brought up in Vapi, India I aspire to be a great software engineer and most importantly a good team member with a smile :) My love for pizzas and Daniel Ricciardo is just unmatched.
How did you hear about Fireproof?
I feel my connection with Fireproof was always meant to happen. I had written a white paper last year about implementing a blockchain based mechanism for decentralized storage and somehow I got accepted at IPFS Bing Belgium 2023 to talk about my paper in one of the tracks. Luckily, I saw a tweet from JChris mentioning that we was leading some other track. I got into a conversation with him, had a couple of calls discussing my idea and his product (Fireproof was at very nascent stages at that point barely a month old I guess). He even introduced me to some interesting folks. Being the selfless and helpful person that JChris is, I asked him for an internship at Fireproof and he readily agreed and the journey has been great and joyful since then. So to be completely honest my introduction to Fireproof was more about the person than the product.
What did you like most when you first learned about Fireproof?
I can probably say 50 good things about Fireproof and its architecture and call it a day, but what intrigued me the most about Fireproof was the convenience and simplicity in its approach. When I was playing around and creating demo applications in React, Fireproofâs React hooks were so easy to understand and integrate that within few lines of code, I had a document based database in my browser with an unopinionated approach allowing me to select my own backend connector to enable excellent syncing and storage capabilities. I think Fireproof storage is all about its developer experience and people get the approach behind this straight away.
What is your speciality as a developer?
I am currently in my final year of undergraduate studies pursuing a Bachelors Degree in Information Technology and would be graduating this summer. I am developer who likes to integrate software into the existing code, write backend infrastructure, work with solidity smart contracts and create React applications with terrible UIs. I thought I was decent at these technologies until I started contributing at Fireproof and realized that delusion is in fact a real thing and I am still far away from being a good developer. But with time I have realized that my speciality lies in taking up new tasks and challenging myself in accomplishing those. This trait is reflected in my works of creating a Chrome extension, publishing an npm package, working with AWS without having any prior knowledge or experience in any of them.
What makes you excited about Fireproof now?
Four things:
The community and the best teammates
Developers and contributors
Disruptive potential
Its architecture and the roadmap ahead
Also the most exciting thing right now at Fireproof are those stickers that Akasha made, but somehow you guys forgot to ship those to India. If you plan to send stuff in the future those hats and t shirts look pretty cool as well. Just kidding!
What have you been working of with Fireproof?
I am currently working on making the best possible version of the Fireproof Chrome extension and integrating it well with the Chrome dev tools so that we can eventually publish it on the Chrome dev store for developers to use its potential and make it convenient for them to see their databases and documents within the browser itself. At the same time, I plan to publish a few blogs about our recent AWS connector and how to use it and update the refactor the core repo with Pail update.
What accomplishment with Fireproof are you most proud of and why?
I think the most happy moment for me at Fireproof was when the Fireproofâs twitter page tweeted about my demo application which was basically a create and voting poll application using Fireproof and PartyKit connector that was retweeted by Matt Billman, the Founder and CEO of Netlify and it somewhat helped Fireproof get into the radar of Netlify and we eventually made a connector for them.
What project was the most difficult and why?
I think the time when I was working on with PartyKit connector turned out to be difficult for me. Although writing the server code and making PartyKit storage accessible for not only meta storage but data storage as well was a fun part for me, and testing the API in isolation also worked fine, debugging the errors when integrating it with existing PartyKit connector turned out to be challenging because of several encoding errors that I faced in the process. The sleepless nights still gives me chills! But I would say that was the most interesting learning phase for me.
What do you want others to know about Fireproof?
Basically everything. The tech, the people working behind it, the convenience it provides, its architecture, how Fireproof is here for the AI era etc. I want Fireproof to become a Honeypot episode in the future.
What kind of people would you like to see get involved in the project? Is there a specific area you think you could use support right now?
The thing that Fireproof requires the most right now is developerâs support. I want more and more developers and companies creating frontend applications with Fireproof to help us understand more about their needs and requirements so that we can try to work on more features and improve for the better. I want people to provide us with constructive criticism, if any, so that we can take their feedback and thrive.
Also the Fireproof Chrome extension is the hottest thing in the development world right now. So if anyone wants to help with creating and designing itâs frontend it would be super helpful for me. Thanks in advance!
What are you excited to be studying and doing in Computer Science school and afterwards?
Studying in USA was always my dream and I will be pursuing my graduate education starting Fall 2024. Although I have learnt the core concepts and got myself familiarized with algorithms, operating systems and databases, I feel that the only missing piece towards me becoming a perfect developer is to now undergo a specialization in software engineering and understand the world of creating and testing robust large scale enterprise software applications. I plan to give my 100% at Fireproof in the future and continue to work with the most exciting and welcoming team I have got right now.