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Google Launches Summer of Code 2007

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the back-once-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Google has announced that it will be doing Summer of Code again this year. The program looks pretty much the same this year but they have built time into the program schedule for students to get up to speed before they start coding. Nice job, Google."

29 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Nerd much? by svunt · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just can't get over the name...'summer of code' seems exactly right for a nerded-up spring break.

    1. Re:Nerd much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nerds Gone WILD!!

      Buy it now, $9.99

      These nerds just cant wait to show you their interconnects. You've never seen anything like THIS before!

    2. Re:Nerd much? by edschurr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Retirees have more time and money to travel than anyone else, and your mind is at its peak when you're young.

    3. Re:Nerd much? by Vexorian · · Score: 2

      Who modded this troll? It seems pretty insightful to me. Do yourself a favour and do something else instead. Travel, meet new people, see new places. You have the rest of your life to spend in front of a computer!
      Says an slashdot user...

      It is not really a nerded-up spring break, since it is a summer of code.
      --

      Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
    4. Re:Nerd much? by rjshields · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You're apparently not the target demographic for this sort of thing then. I have a feeling that the successful applicants will find coding a real project very interesting indeed.
      Yes you're right. When you've spent all year sitting behind a computer studying or writing code, who could think of anything better to do than spend all summer sitting behind a computer writing code? Presumably this is aimed at same sort of person who closes all the blinds in the daytime and fills their room with artificial light. Besides, all the best students will likely already be involved with real open source projects.
      --
      In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
    5. Re:Nerd much? by rjshields · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Whatever gave you the idea that PHP, Gaim, Xorg and so on are not real open source projects?
      That's not what I said or thought and I'm not quite sure how you inferred that from my post! The point I was trying to make is that people who are really "into" their work will already be involved in projects in their spare time and so would not need anything extra to put on their CVs. They can then spend their summer break doing fun things other than coding. I really don't think it's healthy to spend 365 days a year behind a computer.
      --
      In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
  2. Not helping the problem... by commisaro · · Score: 5, Funny

    Couldn't they make it the Winter of code? That was programmers could use the summer to maximize their sun exposure over the 2-3 days/year they spend outside!

    1. Re:Not helping the problem... by Trogre · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For half the world, they have.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    2. Re:Not helping the problem... by kestasjk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm in Australia, so it'll be for the winter, but the problem is that the winter holidays aren't as long as the summer ones at my uni. :(

      --
      // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
    3. Re:Not helping the problem... by edschurr · · Score: 3, Informative

      Four hours of minimum wage work will pay for a year's supply of Vitamin D3; who needs the "outside"? (As I understand it there is no ceiling).

    4. Re:Not helping the problem... by chengmi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The northern hemisphere (having much more land mass than the southern hemisphere) is home to 90% of the human population. So it's "Winter of Code" for only 10% of the world's population. That figure is much lower if you apply the "programmer" constraint.

    5. Re:Not helping the problem... by hachete · · Score: 2, Funny

      BALMER:
      Now is the winter of our discontent
      Made glorious summer by this sun of Google;
      And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
      In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
      Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
      Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
      Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
      Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
      Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
      And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
      To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
      He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
      To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
      But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
      Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
      I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
      To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
      I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
      Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
      Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
      Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
      And that so lamely and unfashionable
      That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
      Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
      Have no delight to pass away the time,
      Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
      And descant on mine own deformity:
      And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
      To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
      I am determined to prove a villain
      And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
      Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
      By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
      To set my brother Sergei and the king
      In deadly hate the one against the other:
      And if King William be as true and just
      As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
      This day should Sergei closely be mew'd up,
      About a prophecy, which says that 'L'
      Of Williams's heirs the murderer shall be.
      Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
      Sergei comes.

      --
      Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
  3. pat on the back by PoopDaddy · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Nice job, Google."

    Google: "Thanks, Google PR employee"

  4. project benefits by Grumpy+Wombat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The SOC project might be worthwile from the point of view of the students gaining experience, but from what I have heard there has been a mixed reaction to the results from the projects they have been working on. Are there any metrics showing the net benefit (or otherwise) to the projects and the relative cost in supervision & reworking code (ie, we got equivalent productivity of say 0.7 of the mentors normal productivity for the time spent mentoring) and how many of the students went on to continue contributing to that or another open source project?

    1. Re:project benefits by TheoMurpse · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah -- two years of Summer of Code funding for students working on gaim, and it still has yet to have a new (non-beta) release. It's getting close, to be fair. Also, from hearsay on the IRC dev channel on Freenode, the reason that video/voice hasn't been integrated into gaim like it was promised a year and a half ago is because one of the SOC workers changed the codebase so much that there was no way they could integrate v&v as easily as was originally planned.

      So basically, from my POV as a pretty interested gaim user, SOC has prevented the integration of v&v into gaim and there has yet to be a new (non-beta) release since before SOC began. Screw any more features added to gaim except v&v and fixed file transfers. Those are the two things preventing many people from fully switching from the official clients of other protocols. I hate having Skype and AIM installed just so I can video chat with non-power users. For the same reason I cannot switch to Linux.

      But hey, I guess Google taught the SOC coders well -- don't push out finished products; instead, just push out betas and keep them beta for years and when users complain: "Hey, it's just beta."

    2. Re:project benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Keep in mind the mentors approve the person.
      This is the same as if you hired a consultant for 3 months.

      The results you get from the students are a direct result of the support the mentor and the community around the project provide.

      Also a large influence is the students ability to take advantage of both the community and the mentor. But this is hopefully less an issue as the mentor gets to chose the student.

      Its only in its third year now. And I imagine the mentors have had no experience being a real mentor. And those that do, this is much different then how they normally operate.

      Most people say "read the list", they expect you if you wish to join the community to put out the effort. Projects that fail I think are a result of mentors failing to grasp the key difference.

      Summer of Code is 3-months. And after that three months expect the person to disappear.
      So you can't say be a mentor by just going around saying "check the mailing list".

      You have to be a mentor the same way a normal company deals with a contractor.
      The students have to be helped and hit the ground running with the communities backing.

      So far a lot of failures I've seen is this lack of understanding.
      Some do, but by and large students are not joining the community.

      So many projects complain that now they don't have a 'maintainer' for the code the student wrote.
      Yeah, well, what do you expect? You hired a contractor.
      The contract is up. You now have to maintain it.

      I believe once this difference is understood, and once mentors and the community around the project realize this as well, there will be a lot more projects the succeed rather then fail.

    3. Re:project benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or maybe the Gaim developers aren't very good managers and/or have poor code modularity, Inkscape just released a new version with blur coded via a GSoC project, Blender is about to release a version with the insanely great sculpting tools also done via GSoC.

    4. Re:project benefits by chx1975 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes the results are mixed. But the Drupal project got a webchick (really, that's her nick!) from the 2005 SoC and since then we hope that every SoC will have someone like her (hardly possible, but let's hope).

    5. Re:project benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The only SoC project I've been following is freenet, it definetely helped them out with various things e.g. a new portable queued download/upload manager, improved email-over-freenet and network simulations to model routing.

    6. Re:project benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Gaim devs have years of practice doing exactly what you describe. If you had any familiarity with the project you shouldn't have expected anything else to have happened. Getting some SOC coders to work on the project is not going to completely turn it around.

    7. Re:project benefits by Jorrit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's only one case that you now mention. In our case (Crystal Space) every SoC programmer worked in his own SVN branch so there was no risk of the code being changed too much. I think most other projects also handled this in a similar way. So I don't see how this can qualify as a problem with the SoC program. If that same student had come to work for Gaim outside of SoC and if he would have done the same job then the same problem would have occured.

      Greetings,

      --
      Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
    8. Re:project benefits by webchickenator · · Score: 4, Informative

      My view is that SoC isn't so much about getting usable code at the end (though it's always great if that happens), but about attracting and retaining new talent to the project. I will use me as an example. ;) My 2005 SoC project was the Quiz module for Drupal. That module turned into an utter train wreck, because it was assigned to two students (myself and another guy), one of whom (guess which one? ;)) overbooked himself during the summer and wasn't able to get basically anything done. So while half of the project was finished (the backend, storage stuff), the other half was not (the front end, "actually take a quiz" stuff). It then fell on my shoulders to try and finish the other half in between other things after SoC was over. I had it almost working, and then a major API change landed just as I got a full-time consulting job, so the module was stuck in a limbo state for months. So by the measure of "usable code", that project was a miserable failure. However, in the meantime, I had become an active member of the documentation team, I was reviewing dozens of core patches a week, I was responding to user support questions in the forum, I was evangelizing the Drupal project to everyone I came across, and so on. Then after SoC, I went on to do even more things, and am now completely immersed in the community and helping out with core development. So hopefully, in the grand scheme of things, I have helped the Drupal project more than I have hurt it by the lack of usable code at the end of my SoC project. Though as a "happy ending" aside, I did manage to pick away at the module over the months to the point where it was semi-usable again about a year later. And some other people came in and took it the rest of the way, and now it's used on several sites, and has a little mini community of contributors around it. Woohoo. :)

  5. Goddamit, I give up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just who the fuck are we hating this week? Whenever I think I've got it, you bastards post another "Google/Microsoft is Good/Evil" story, and I'm lost all over again.

  6. Re:Summer? by martin-boundary · · Score: 3, Funny

    Did Google move to Australia?
    No, it's global warming. Soon, you'll notice it too.
  7. The best metric by Per+Abrahamsen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The best metric for the success of the project on the host side will probably be how many host organizations reapply next year.

    It is worth remembering that the student isn't the only one who learns from a student/mentor relationship. The mentor will know a lot more about how the problem can (or cannot) be solved after the project, this way the student implementation would act as a prototype.

  8. Summer ... global warming by extern_void · · Score: 2, Funny

    Soon, google will lunch "google summer code" everyday, because everyday will be summer.

  9. Re:High School by Deltaspectre · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, sadly, unless they changed it from last year. You have to be 18 by the time of application deadlines. :(

    --
    My UID is prime... is yours?
  10. Exactly! by jeffmeden · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is just what I was going to say. This time around, google, PLEEEEASE put someone good on GAIM!!! Not that it's bad software, and I know that if I want it to improve I should shut up and fix it, but it would be nice to hear about SoC working for this project for once.

  11. SOC 2007idea for multilingual OLPC by wixi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    plug: if you know any CS students looking for an idea to win Google SOC 2007, check out a multilingual wiki app for the OLPC: http:/wiki.laptop.org/go/WiXi .. project has OLPC approval if student provides qualified mentor.. languages: python, javascript..