chrisd writes "The Summer of Code is officially on again this year. As of today, we're taking in applications from mentoring organizations, so watch that list of mentoring organizations grow! Then, starting May 1st, we'll start taking student applications.
We've prepared two FAQs, one for Mentors and one for Students. We've also have created an IRC channel and Google Group for you. The website for the Summer of Code can be found at http://code.google.com/soc/."
Wouldn't it make more sense to be hosting it over at freenode? I have nothing against slashnet, but there's probably more coding discussion going on over there than any other irc network.
It isn't really about Freenode, but I'm used to being on slashnet. So there you go.
It's not about slashnet either. My point was that most of the "coding discussion" is going on at freenode and not slashnet. It's not a big deal either way.
Yeah, but then you're just trading it for Lilo notice spam, screwed up hostname spoofs that goes against the rfc, and other silliness. Why not just have it over MSN Chat if you're going to violate all the relevant standards anyways?
Spend your summers doing stuff other than coding. Get a job working outside or at Mac Donalds. Once you graduate and spend your days coding, you'll wish you did. You have years of 'summers of code' ahead - at your job. Try something else while you have the chance.
You have years of 'summers of code' ahead - at your job. Try something else while you have the chance.
Yes, but those summers of coding will be heavily deadline driven and for projects one probably doesn't want to work on that much. Whereas a 'Summer of Code' is more about working on something of personal interest and learning. It's more a workshop than a day-job.
Yes, students, spend your summer working in a greasy McDonalds getting the worlds largest pimple collection, instead of spending it doing something fun and challenging with flexible hours and working from home while doing something good for the state of humanity.
Summer of code: - Working on something you enjoy - Possibility of getting 4500 USD personally and 500 USD for your favourite OSS project - Doing something that will benefit at least one person somewhere else in the world, if not many thousands. - Practice for future job probably - Something reasonably unique to put on CV
McDonalds - Boring, hot, horrid job - Shit money - Further perpetuating the problem of obesity and heart problems by providing overweight middle aged men and women and their kids, for whom they can't be bothered to cook a nutritious meal, with their daily dose of fatty dead animal - Time spent doing repetitive tasks that require no skill or thought - Just another generic teenage job to put on your CV, if mentioned at all
I think you forgot how competitive the software development market is when you just come out of school. It's those people that have experience doing stuff like the summer of code that are going to get jobs after school, not the guy who worked at McDonalds because he felt that he'd never get the chance once he starts real work.
I hear what you're saying, but it's likely that this fun project that you choose to work on will be the most used piece of code you ever write in your career.
If you're going to do CS, don't even bother listening to this guy. You get out of University, and all the job offers are asking for experience. I don't think they mean experience in McDonalds. Summer of Code is a way to make a quick buck, doing something fun and challenging that will look hella good on a CV or application. I don't see any negative points except for the effort required...
I was too young to participate in the competition last year, but I've been hoping against hope that the SOC would happen again this year.
Count me in, in other words.
I really think it's great that Google's taken this step to advocating Open Source among the future of software development (ie, students). It's exciting and a ton of great Open Source groups benefit from the fruits of these kids' labors.
I think it would be nice to find out what ultimately became of all the work done on last summer's coding. Voice/Video support for Gaim was one of the Summer of Code projects last year, and it's still a feature being pushed further into the roadmap.
Happened to work with one of the products of last "Summer of Code" (no fingerpointing). Raw, unfinished, bad coding, no docs. Ended up delegating it to one of my friends in one of the 3rd world country. He wrote it from scratch in 4 weeks for $300.
I guess the value of "Summer of Code" is mostly educational.
Miguel de Icaza, founder of the Mono project, made a blog post yesterday about the state of the SoC projects for Mono : http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Apr-13.html [tirania.org] 11 projects out of 16 were continued, 6 students still being involved in Mono today.
I wonder if that's anything to do with how "nice" the respective codebases are. Mono is new and so
(one would hope) relatively clean, while Mozilla has a reputation for being quite horrible. And this is IME the most important factor in how enjoyable it is to work on a particular project.
While gaim has been working toward voice and video support, that's been up the the gaim-vv fork. Their work has been dumped back into the main 2.x.y development tree. The framework for voice and video is currently in the 2.0.0 betas, but it's not been enabled yet.
Maybe I blinked and missed it, but I never saw a simple list of the successfully delivered SoC2005 projects. Where are they? Where will the 2006 projects be reported when they're delivered?
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday April 14 2006, @03:48PM (#15132564)
I realize that the program is called Summer of _Code_, but I think a lot of open source projects could benefit just as much from dedicated QA or documentation work [google.com]. I mean, I've seen a lot more people complain about gaim's instability than its lack of a "music messaging" [sourceforge.net] feature =P.
Interesting point. Gaim (or Glib 2.8, it doesn't matter to me) is incompatible with Glib 2.8 on Windows. This bug has existed for a long time and is extremely frustrating for developers who want to release software that uses Glib 2.8 on Windows.
One of the FreeBSD SoC[1] projects was a redesign of the website. Some HTML 'coding' was required, but no serious hacking. There's no requirement that the SoC projects have to be deep coding.
[1] By the way, I really hate that acronym. Too much confusion with System on Chip.
I think the Summer of Code is a good idea in principle, but what I find a bit questionable is how heavily Linux oriented it is. There are open source devlopers who write for Windows (and Mac, and Amiga, ect) as their primary platform, and a great many CS students use Windows as their primary OS. I feel that the Summer of Code is slightly biased against them (at least the last one seemed to be).
How is programming on Linux any different from programming on Windows, Mac, etc? The APIs might be different, but that's just the grease, not the axle. And you've always got the standard library to fall back on.
Because not all developers run Linus obviously, or have a Mac. Some of us use Windows. For example I use Windows because of 1- games 2- Visual Studio 3 - Linux doesn't have drivers for all my hardware.
No offense, but if you think Windows (or Mac or Amiga or whatever) needs more representations, then I suggest you tell those CS students using Windows and open source developers for Windows to participate! Better yet, tell the Windows open source projects to offer to be mentors, and tell the CS students to apply. Heck, the two groups might even match up!
Personally, I think the SoC 2005 participants included a great number of platform-agnostic projects. Web apps like Drupal, Gallery, XWiki, Java projects, Per
This is something I was hoping to do. Certainly better pay and more fun than my current job! Unfortunately, I fall short on a _single_ eligibility requirement: age.
...please take a look at my little piece on grading proposals Summer of Code 2005 [internet2.edu] written after the students who made it were selected.
Wow, that's weird. I just sent in a request yesterday asking if I could work on something for a thesis paper. Now, less than 24 hours later... Nice of them to create the program after I sent the mail yesterday... Grin
This is not work for Google in particular, but for open source projects in general. In my opinion, it is an excellent way to get young people to get involved with open source, as they are offered monetary incentive. This is unusual for an unproven developer joining any open source project, I think.
The problem with the Internet is that sometimes humor is just plain lost. I think I have a fairly good appreciation of humor and sarcasm, and reading over your original post, I still don't see it. Since you've been modded down, apparently most mods don't see it either. It seems the words you wrote don't effectively convey the idea you were thinking.
Was the point to produce full-fledged software or to give students a chance to learn more? If google wanted finished and functional software, I'm sure they'd hire the experts to get it done in time. The point of the summer of code is to grant computer science students the opportunity to do something in their field for a summer job instead of flipping burgers.
So before you call the Summer of Code a failure, question what the student workers _learned_ instead of how many stable releases they built.
What will GOOG do to stop the same outright shambles this time round?
The page [mozillazine.org]
you linked to says nothing about outright shambles. He specifically
says "I don't want this post to be seen as bashing either SoCcers or
mentors". The page offers some excellent comments and suggestions for
2006, and I'm glad to see that Google is listening (Chris responded in
the comments). Some of the suggestions are also meant for us mentors.
The Nmap project [insecure.org] is proud
to have been invited to participate in SoC again for 2006, and we are
looking forward to it!
You can call it "outright shambles" if you want, but all the emails I have from participants talking about how much they learned and enjoyed the program speak otherwise. And was it valuable to the Nmap project too? Take a look at their efforts and decide for yourself:
Doug Hoyte nearly tripled the size of the version detection
database, and added OS/device type/hostname detection using the version
detection DB. He made numerous other improvements as well.
Adriano Monteiro designed and implemented an advanced Nmap GUI and results viewer
named UMIT [sourceforge.net]
(screenshots [sourceforge.net]).
Ole Morten Grodaas designed and implemented another advanced Nmap
GUI and results viewer (its nice to have choices in open source!)
named NmapGUI. Details and download here [seclists.org])
Chris Gibson has written a sweet little network tool named Ncat [seclists.org],
which takes the venerable Netcat in an interesting and extremely
useful direction with features such as connection brokering, socks
proxying, and much more.
Paul Tarjan added the runtime interaction [insecure.org] feature to Nmap. While Nmap is running, you can now press 'v' to increase verbosity,
'd' to increase the debugging level, 'p' to enable packet tracing,
or the capital versions (V,D,P) to do the opposite. Any other key
(such as enter) will print out a status message giving the estimated
time until scan completion.
They did much more -- these are just some of the highlights. So I, for one, am looking forward to continuing these outright shambles again this year! But at the same time, there is always room for improvements . So I appreciate Gerv's constructive criticism.
About the IRC channel (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:About the IRC channel (Score:5, Informative)
Chris
Parent
Re:About the IRC channel (Score:2)
It's not about slashnet either. My point was that most of the "coding discussion" is going on at freenode and not slashnet. It's not a big deal either way.
Re:HEY EVERYONE LOOK IT'S CHRIS DIBONA (Score:2)
Re:About the IRC channel (Score:2, Informative)
Dear Students, (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dear Students, (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but those summers of coding will be heavily deadline driven and for projects one probably doesn't want to work on that much. Whereas a 'Summer of Code' is more about working on something of personal interest and learning. It's more a workshop than a day-job.
Parent
Re:Dear Students, (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dear Students, (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dear Students, (Score:2)
Re:Dear Students, (Score:5, Insightful)
- Working on something you enjoy
- Possibility of getting 4500 USD personally and 500 USD for your favourite OSS project
- Doing something that will benefit at least one person somewhere else in the world, if not many thousands.
- Practice for future job probably
- Something reasonably unique to put on CV
McDonalds
- Boring, hot, horrid job
- Shit money
- Further perpetuating the problem of obesity and heart problems by providing overweight middle aged men and women and their kids, for whom they can't be bothered to cook a nutritious meal, with their daily dose of fatty dead animal
- Time spent doing repetitive tasks that require no skill or thought
- Just another generic teenage job to put on your CV, if mentioned at all
Parent
Re:Dear Students, (Score:2)
Re:Dear Students, (Score:2)
Re:Dear Students, (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Dear Students, (Score:3, Funny)
Unless you are lazy this shouldn't be a problem either.
Just What I was Hoping For. (Score:2, Interesting)
Count me in, in other words.
I really think it's great that Google's taken this step to advocating Open Source among the future of software development (ie, students). It's exciting and a ton of great Open Source groups benefit from the fruits of these kids' labors.
Kudos to you, Google.
What happened to all last years projects? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What happened to all last years projects? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:What happened to all last years projects? (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess the value of "Summer of Code" is mostly educational.
Parent
Re:What happened to all last years projects? (Score:5, Informative)
11 projects out of 16 were continued, 6 students still being involved in Mono today.
The Mozilla project had far less chance : None of the 10 projects are alive as of today : http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2006
I guess they'll be more carefull about the motivations of the people the choose this year...
Parent
Re:What happened to all last years projects? (Score:2)
Re:What happened to all last years projects? (Score:2)
Re:What happened to all last years projects? (Score:2)
Re:What happened to all last years projects? (Score:2)
No it wasn't. http://gaim.sourceforge.net/summerofcode/ [sourceforge.net]
While gaim has been working toward voice and video support, that's been up the the gaim-vv fork. Their work has been dumped back into the main 2.x.y development tree. The framework for voice and video is currently in the 2.0.0 betas, but it's not been enabled yet.
HTH
The Sunlight it Burns (Score:5, Funny)
~S
Autumn of This Content (Score:2)
That's convenient. (Score:2)
I guess that answers my question [slashdot.org].
For some reason I had heard that it wasn't happening this year. I'm excited that it is.
Re:That's convenient. (Score:2)
Wait, spoke too soon. I didn't realize that it was only available to students.
Back to the drawing board...
Maybe Summer of Code is too narrow? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe Summer of Code is too narrow? (Score:2)
Re:Maybe Summer of Code is too narrow? (Score:2)
[1] By the way, I really hate that acronym. Too much confusion with System on Chip.
A bit distasteful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A bit distasteful (Score:2)
Re:A bit distasteful (Score:2)
Re:A bit distasteful (Score:2)
Re:A bit distasteful (Score:2)
Then Write a Proposal... (Score:3, Insightful)
Better yet, tell the Windows open source projects to offer to be mentors, and tell the CS students to apply. Heck, the two groups might even match up!
Personally, I think the SoC 2005 participants included a great number of platform-agnostic projects. Web apps like Drupal, Gallery, XWiki, Java projects, Per
What do you mean "Linux oriented" ? (Score:2)
Oh so close... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh well, there's always next year.
If you think about applying... (Score:5, Informative)
Winter of code? (Score:2, Interesting)
damn Aussie seasons
I don't suppose there's any chance of a Google "Winter of Code"
Just sent them a request yesterday... (Score:2)
Terms of Service (Score:2)
Forgive my pedantry.
Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India (Score:2)
Re:Cheaper than outsourceing to India (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Summer of Code 2005 was teh fail (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Summer of Code 2005 was teh fail (Score:3, Insightful)
So before you call the Summer of Code a failure, question what the student workers _learned_ instead of how many stable releases they built.
Nmap project was a great success (Score:5, Informative)
What will GOOG do to stop the same outright shambles this time round?
The page [mozillazine.org] you linked to says nothing about outright shambles. He specifically says "I don't want this post to be seen as bashing either SoCcers or mentors". The page offers some excellent comments and suggestions for 2006, and I'm glad to see that Google is listening (Chris responded in the comments). Some of the suggestions are also meant for us mentors. The Nmap project [insecure.org] is proud to have been invited to participate in SoC again for 2006, and we are looking forward to it!
You can call it "outright shambles" if you want, but all the emails I have from participants talking about how much they learned and enjoyed the program speak otherwise. And was it valuable to the Nmap project too? Take a look at their efforts and decide for yourself:
They did much more -- these are just some of the highlights. So I, for one, am looking forward to continuing these outright shambles again this year! But at the same time, there is always room for improvements . So I appreciate Gerv's constructive criticism.
-Fyodor [insecure.org]
Parent