How I ended up at GSoC

My Google Summer Of Code Journey, experience and takeaways

Transcript

1. How I ended up at GSoC
2. Before college What is the most geekiest thing that you’ve ever done in computers?
3. Level 1: Change the color of taskbar to “Olive green” Level 2: leavemealone, panzer, comeflywithme Level Max: Protect confidential information
4. Enter college...
6. We all have multiple voices within us...
7. My views about Open Source? - What do I get? Ain’t got no time to work for free. - The codebase is huge, I don’t understand a shit - I can’t do build on Windows? No thanks. - I need to install linux, learn git, X language, Y framework, a long way to go… - How do I build this thing? The builds fail :( - IRC is boring. Why are people too busy to respond? - Do I really need to do all this? Why can’t things be simple?
8. My views about Google Summer Of Code? - Stipend? I can buy a car with that. - Stickers, T-shirts, other swags. Well, that’s something to show off! - Wow, it has “Google” in it. I’ll add it to my CV. - Long story short, my life would be better, somehow
9. First attempt at GSoC
10. Python Angular Google App Engine The project builds? Picking my Dream project
11. First Pull Request
12. Task: Fetch and save an image from a url in Python 3 days, 51 lines of code, 11 commits.
14. And 51 review comments!
15. What next? I submitted a proposal anyway (optimism), and surprisingly….
16. I didn’t make it. And after a few months of inactivity....
17. Views about GSoC - part two - Wisdom from part 1 + - I did terribly last time. I had to do something. - I didn’t wanted to work for a health insurance company. - Competitive programming is not my cup of tea. - Zomato hires GSoCers. = I got a New Year resolution.
18. Enter 2017...
19. Contributed to 6 projects Project 1: Won’t build at all. Project 2: Didn’t actually had any project to build and work. Project 3: Built, but poor code. So I rejected. Project 4: Google rejected it. Project 5: Was accepted for first time. Also, felt cool. Project 6: Had the most active community.
20. 5 months of effort, 3 proposals, and then...
21. Phew… Selected!
22. Takeaways
23. What GSoC taught me? - How to develop real world softwares that thousands of people use. - Writing code matters, but being able to read and review other people’s code matters even more. - Made me regular with writing and maintaining my blog. - That things may seem daunting and huge first, but if you try to stick with it, they become much easier. - Proper design and tests are there for a very good reason. - GSoC a full time thing. Think thrice, before doing it with an internship.
24. What if I didn’t get into GSoC? Actually, it’s the experience of contributing to Open Source projects that helped me a lot. - Writing efficient code - Community - People smart than me to work with - Pushing me for things that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. - Internships, freelancing, conferences, etc
25. And this is what Open Source gave me back...
26. A few common things Don’t ask to ask! Also, don’t ask to select. People will often help only when you actually need help. The more you help others, the more you’ll be helped. Having a quality proposal is way more important than number of commits or Lines of Code merged.
27. Thank you! A bit about me... - Final year undergrad, DTU - Freelance Software Developer (Data Science and Blockchain Technologies) - GSoC 17, GCI 17 mentor, GSoC 18 mentor https://satwikkansal.xyz Handle: @satwikkansal