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Summer of Code Student Application Deadline Looms

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pencils-down-class dept.

chrisd writes "Hi everyone, just wanted to do one last shake of the old tree...the Summer of Code student application deadline is coming up on the 26th. We've got some great applications but I'd love to see more. We're accepting 800 students this year into the program and we have 131 open source organizations who'd love to see you apply. Anyone can talk about open source but you could be coding some with some of the best developmers out there. Apply today." Just a note: the 26th is an extension of the previous deadline. If you thought you wouldn't have time, you now have until next Monday. Get crackin'.

33 comments

  1. Where is the bleeding edge? by mangu · · Score: 1, Insightful
    I looked over the list of sponsors and it seemed to be mostly about mature projects.


    I think that where we really need fresh ideas is in the field that has been in the experimental phase ever since computers were invented: artificial intelligence. It would be great to see Google's massive hardware resources applied to creating (or trying to create) stuff like an artificial consciousness.


    Let the old guys do the incremental improvements, young programmers should spend one summer doing things no one has ever tried, or at least things they never heard about.

    1. Re:Where is the bleeding edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes! Let's build a huge computer network, connect it to every city in every continent, feed it with the sum of human knowledge and then round up our best and brightest to build it a consciousness.... with a plan like that?.... what could go wrong?

    2. Re:Where is the bleeding edge? by EvanED · · Score: 1

      Let the old guys do the incremental improvements, young programmers should spend one summer doing things no one has ever tried, or at least things they never heard about.

      In one summer, for the equivalent of a grad student's stipend?

    3. Re:Where is the bleeding edge? by MrDomino · · Score: 2, Informative

      Parent is ridiculous. AI gets a good representation from e.g. the Fast Artificial Neural Network Library, and there are lots of innovative and experimental project ideas--see for instance Squeak's collaborative development proposal.

      Can we say karma whore?

    4. Re:Where is the bleeding edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Summer of Code is about little vignettes. Things that are well-defined and can be done and closed, leaving a nice taste in the mouth.

      Something open-ended and nebulous like artificial consciousness is better suited for... postgrad work. Which students are also very welcome to apply for. As soon as they graduate :-)

    5. Re:Where is the bleeding edge? by caseydk · · Score: 1

      "Let the old guys do the incremental improvements, young programmers should spend one summer doing things no one has ever tried, or at least things they never heard about."

      Considering the vast majority of new graduates are going to take a job where they're working on someone else's codebase tracking down bugs, implementing new functionality, and generally making improvements, the projects make quite a bit of sense. Further, if you read some of the details of what the various projects are talking about, some are looking for quite innovative and creative functionality.

      Which sounds better:
      "I started a new project from nothing to compete with Eclipse" or
      "I created an Proof of Concept plugin for Eclipse that shows how to write plugins in PHP"

      Both show some insight, but I'd wager that one will actually get done and be in a demo-quality state.

    6. Re:Where is the bleeding edge? by mangu · · Score: 1
      Considering the vast majority of new graduates are going to take a job where they're working on someone else's codebase tracking down bugs, implementing new functionality, and generally making improvements, the projects make quite a bit of sense.


      Could be, but one would expect more from a company whose name became a verb in the English language. If all a new graduate expects to do is to track down bugs in someone else's program one should say goodbye to all innovation.


      What Google should be looking for is to the future of search engines, and that involves a lot more intelligence than one finds today. It still takes some ingenuity to narrow a search down to what one wants, not to mention that there's no way to search for "a photo that looks like this", for instance.


      As for me, when I look for people to hire, I get too many resumes of Excel power users and almost none from someone who I can trust to write good and effective code. I'd rather hire someone who shows vision than someone who can only do what everyone else does.

    7. Re:Where is the bleeding edge? by caseydk · · Score: 1

      "Could be, but one would expect more from a company whose name became a verb in the English language. If all a new graduate expects to do is to track down bugs in someone else's program one should say goodbye to all innovation."

      The last time I checked, Google leveraged a huge amount of Open Source software in their infrastructure to make said innovation happen. As a result, they've solved bugs, implemented functionality, and probably done 100x more things that I simply don't know about.

      A career in software development is all about interacting with other people's code... sometimes it's directly like supporting an existing app, other times, it's ancillary like when you use libraries from third parties, and other times it's almost accidental like when you utilize additional services (web services, etc).

  2. GNUstep ! by Nicolas+Roard · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those unaware, GNUstep got accepted this year ... So if you want to discover a neat little OO language (Objective-C), and work on a really great framework, don't hesitate !

    GNUstep is a free implementation of the OpenStep API, cross-platform (windows, linux, etc), close to Apple's Cocoa (ie, Cocoa is itself an extension of the OpenStep API, so in fact you can port Cocoa app to GNUstep and vice-versa -- GNUstep can now even read/write apple nibs natively). In addition to the frameworks, there's nice development tools, in particular Gorm, the GNUstep's pendant to InterfaceBuilder.

    Check the GNUstep wiki to see a list of potential projects !

  3. Spellcheck Anyone? by Jazzer_Techie · · Score: 4, Funny

    you could be coding some with some of the best developmers out there
    Is a developmer just a bunch of individual developers arranged into some sort of chain?

    (Yes, I know a polymer is not a chain of polys. It's supposed to be funny. Leave me alone.)
    1. Re:Spellcheck Anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is a developmer just a bunch of individual developers arranged into some sort of chain?

      It's a beowulf cluster of developers if you will.
    2. Re:Spellcheck Anyone? by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 1

      Do summer of code students get to work on some cool techmology with Ali G?

      --

      --

      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
  4. Great Program! by fv · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have been participating as a mentor for the SoC program since it started, and I highly recommend it. It is a great way to get paid, gain valuable experience and a great resume booster, and write code which will be used by thousands or millions of people! Your can read about the successful creations of Nmap SoC students in 2005 and 2006.

    This year I am involved with three projects which have been accepted for SoC this year:

    And even if none of those projects float your boat, there are 128 others to choose from. Remember that you can apply for multiple projects, and doing so can (with sufficient care and detail for each application) be a good way to increase your odds.

    -Fyodor
    Insecure.Org

    1. Re:Great Program! by specific_pacific · · Score: 1

      "I have been participating as a mentor for the SoC program since it started, and I highly recommend it. It is a great way to get paid"

      Don't have to read that twice!

  5. Ah well. by Elentari · · Score: 1

    I'm still too young. Guess I'll have to wait until next year. Out of interest, why do applicants have to be aged 18 or older? This is probably a pretty stupid question, but I can't see an obvious answer.

    1. Re:Ah well. by Aladrin · · Score: 3, Informative

      Legal agreements. The code they produce has to have legally binding agreements with it, and minors cannot enter into contracts in many places.

      The exact nature of the agreement varies from project to project, at the decision of the project. Common agreements assign ownership of the code to the project, or assign ownership to the student but guarantee a perpetual licensing agreement with the project.

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
    2. Re:Ah well. by Carthag · · Score: 1

      A good rule of thumb: If the reason something is happening or required isn't immediately obvious, it's likely to do with law or the legal system. ;)

    3. Re:Ah well. by dch24 · · Score: 1
      There's a good chance if you jump in on one of the projects anyway as a volunteer, you will be in a better position to get paid next year. First of all, it will save you the trouble of getting accepted as a SoCoder. Secondly, you will still gain the experience of working with top "developmers". And several of the SoC projects are back for their second year, so those would be good projects to work with. You could even (with a little research) find out who is chiefly responsible this year for selecting applicants, and ask them what they look for. They might not be in charge next year, but all of this information and practice will give you the kind of edge you'll need to accomplish one of two things:
      • Successfully get paid next year for Summer of Code
      • Get hired for a summer internship at Google (which will pay a lot more)
      Good luck.
  6. AS an old guy, I say by geekoid · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Fuck you.

    Seriously, everyione should spen time trying stuff no one has tried or succesfully accomplished.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  7. Wikimedia's open projects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Check out Wikimedia's open list for the Summer of Code '07. Some great stuff there. All you wiki-fanatics out there can do both SoC and wiki stuff at the same time.

  8. No Mythtv this year.... by russ1337 · · Score: 1

    I'm a little disappointed not to see Mythtv on the list. It could do with a boost.

    Mythtv was on the SOC list last year but I don't think we saw much in the way of enhancements - just an 'experimental' add detection algorithm which you can use instead of the standard one. They had a list of things they wanted done, most importantly making setup a bit easier and a new (ajax?) UI.

    The latest Ubuntu (Feisty) includes support for the PVR-150 out of the box, (IVTV drivers?), and will include more for Mythtv in the repo's, or so I am lead to believe. And has allot more support for getting up and running with Mythtv, just Mythtv itself needs a boost.

    Oh well, It will get there eventually.

    1. Re:No Mythtv this year.... by RelaxedTension · · Score: 2, Informative

      I read on the MythTV dev list that it was a pretty much a disaster for last year. The students worked on several things and finished almost nothing. It apparently turned into a situation of wasting the mentors time and the students not having the discipline to do the work from home. The MythTV project didn't want to do that again.

      It's too bad, I support the idea of SOC, but maybe it needs closer inspection of actual work done prior to paying them. (currency exchange problems aside)

    2. Re:No Mythtv this year.... by am+2k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with SoC is that the participants are like (inexperienced) contractors to the project. All other devs on the projects are (usually) non-paid spare-time developer.

      This means that the SoC students have to be treated differently, which some mentors didn't expect. Since they're inexperienced, they usually plan far more than they could ever achieve in the time frame, but some projects picked those first since they sounded best. They expected the students to complete their work after deadline, so they gave them a positive review, even though nothing was finished. Of course, nothing happend, since students are used to dropping everything after a course is done.

      For example, take a look at the Haiku project's SoC ideas. They didn't participate last year, so they haven't learnt that lesson yet. Most of these projects are like a large master's thesis, some even more! That's ridiculous, there's no way any SoC student would be able to do that in the given time frame.

      When students try to work on a project that's far above their head, you can expect that they constantly talk to their mentors about how to do it.

  9. Open Source Game Projects! by mithro · · Score: 2, Informative

    There are also a bunch of other Open Source Game projects you can work on, here is a short list.

    If you are interested in game programming you should give them a look.

    --
    Thousand Parsec - http://www.thousandparsec.net/
  10. Better join MoinMoin.. :) by mpathy · · Score: 1

    If you wanna do SoC stuff and do amazing wiki stuff, join the MoinMoin project, who also get accepted this year.

    If you ask why you surely would prefer it, I have just one short answer: MoinMoin is coded in python, while MediaWiki is, uhm, "coded" in PHP.. :)

    But all in all - the MoinMoin project is developing a popular wiki engine with steadly growing popularity - big names like Apache, Ubuntu, Python, Debian, Fedora, Xen, KernelNewbies, linuxwiki.org (de), etc. are all using MoinMoin to keep the contact going with their users and developers and for documentation.

    Try it out!

    And if you like it, why not apply for SoC? ;)

    --
    Ubuntu, a terminal, Python and Slashdot. Thats all you need.
  11. Yawn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    SoC is worse every year.

    The last year most people just screwed SoC in mid August and decided to go free camping, while adding the address of their mentor to the killfile. Some mentors had done that before their student though.

    ""So this year, we should expect that to happen in June."", said Google's SoC General Manager, Chris DiBona to the slashdot editor.

  12. Adium is still looking... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Adium is still looking for participants.

    http://trac.adiumx.com/wiki/SummerOfCode

  13. Gallery by BacOs · · Score: 1

    The Gallery Project hasn't yet seen a big interest in the 2007 Summer of Code. We'd like to encourage all interested students to apply before the deadline. Please don't wait until the last minute!

    Students should feel free to submit their own project idea. In fact, we strongly suggest you submit your own project idea and have updated our ideas page to reflect this. You don't have to start from scratch - our "Create your own idea!" section has links to several areas with possible ideas. The Sample Ideas on our ideas page are just examples - they're not necessarily a higher priority than any other feature request.

    We'd also like to encourage you to apply for multiple projects. We've seen several applications for the same project and we can only select one student for each project.

    If you have any questions, feel free to talk to us on our Summer of Code mailing list or in #gallery on irc.freenode.net

    Good luck!

    --
    Michael Schultheiss
    Gallery Summer of Code Program Administration Team

  14. And the Southern Hemisphere? by lzmbr · · Score: 1

    Perhaps Google could make a Summer of Code for the southern hemisphere too. I'd love to participate if it were in January.

  15. last nanosecond idea: mediawixi by wixi · · Score: 1

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2007 /proposals#WiXi
    will turn wikipedia (and mediawiki sites) into a useful language
    learning interface a.) people can use to teach/learn language and
    b.) machines can use to improve statistical machine translation

  16. Re:there is a god by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow. I guess even a guy with a long history of +5 Interesting/Informative/Insightful posts occasionally needs to take a break and post a loopy comment like that. On the other hand, since the last time he posted something that was sane was nearly three years ago in July 2003, maybe it's just his kid brother logging into his account.