[Haskell-beginners] Google Summer of Code

[Thomas Jakway]

I usually just lurk on the mailing lists and am nowhere near experienced 
enough in Haskell to consider applying for GSOC, but just wanted to say 
how impressed I am at the Haskell community for seeing someone from a 
major project encouraging to mentor someone on the beginner mailing 
list.  It's really important to feeling like those projects are accessible.

On 12/23/14 11:51 PM, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote:
> On 12/22/2014 03:03 PM, Njagi Mwaniki wrote:
>> Which books or resources or libraries should one read to get ready for
>> the Google summer of code? Also which projects would be easiest to work
>> on for beginners?
>>
>> Anything that would make one ready for Google summer of code and
>> complete their project with ease.
>>
>> I'm currently taking cs194 from upenn online
>> http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/lectures.html
>> _______________________________________________
>> Beginners mailing list
>> Beginners at haskell.org
>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
>>
> What matters the most[†] is the project you pick (in respect of how
> useful to the Haskell community it is), what you promise to do with it
> and how likely it is that you can fulfill your promise. Notably, GSOC is
> not a project that aims to teach you (Haskell|C|Python|LISP|pick your
> poison). For this reason your question about books to read on beginners
> mailing list seems slightly misguided to me. I do not think you are
> expecting there to be a ‘How to prepare for GSOC’ book ;). By no means
> do I hope to discourage you somehow of course but if you hope to have a
> serious chance at having an idea accepted, you need to start gaining
> some expertise in the area ASAP. I commend you on sending out your
> e-mail before 2015!
>
> It is of course best to find a project you are interested in: you
> probably don't want to dive into linear algebra package for GSOC if you
> have 0 interest or previous exposure to the topic.
>
> It is also unlikely that a brand new project will be accepted unless it
> offers great benefits and is likely to do great things after GSOC is
> over. It seems difficult to imagine, especially for a beginner.
>
> My advice is that you should start looking at existing projects *now*
> and see if you can't start committing straight away while having a
> grander scheme in mind: you are much more likely to get accepted if your
> proposal says ‘I have already been committing to this project for past 3
> months’ than ‘I will spend first two weeks familiarising myself with the
> codebase’. It's favourable if you already have some rough idea how you
> would go about hacking your project rather than having to investigate
> once the project starts.
>
> The project you will work on has to somehow benefit Haskell community.
> ‘I will write a game and people will have fun hour playing it’ is
> probably not good. ‘I will improve Hackage/cabal/Haddock/GHC’ is much
> more likely to make it through. You are meant to have a pretty good idea
> of what you will doing: ‘I will fix whatever issues I can for 3 months’
> is probably not good but ‘I will fix X, Y, Z tickets which currently
> hinder the community/will allow the community to become a better place
> because ABC’ seems much more likely to be accepted. The project has to
> be reasonable for your skillset: do not try to promise to do work which
> is obviously out of your ability (Haskell or otherwise) or one that you
> can do but will simply take too long.
>
> Your proposal and subsequent 3 months of work need a mentor: this is
> most likely going to be someone involved with the project already. If
> you have an idea of what project you would like to help out, you should
> by all means seek out people involved earlier than later. They can most
> likely advise you on your proposal, say how viable your ideas are and
> probably mentor it.
>
> Lastly, remember that you are competing with other people. I believe
> there were some ~30 proposals submitted last year for only 15 or so slots.
>
> I recommend you try to find past proposals. There is usually a template
> you are asked to fill out and the questions there should help you form
> the idea of what you're expected to write down.
>
> Hopefully this helps somehow. There is #haskell-gsoc on Freenode where a
> few people are idling and it gets much busier closer to the proposal
> deadlines.
>
> PS: Shameless plug time! Haddock is a pretty core tool and we could
> always use some helpers! If you end up looking at Haddock as one of the
> possible projects, I could advise you and probably mentor it. A weaker
> candidate is the Yi text editor: it's not exactly a core tool but there
> is quite a bit of interest in it. I hear that it has very nearly made it
> into GSOC last year! I could probably also mentor this if need be. I
> don't know if I'm eligible to take part myself this year or if I will
> even have time so if you're interested in either of these you should let
> me know sooner than later.
>
> †: In my opinion, based on having taken part, including one successful
> completion and one failure to get in.
>