ESA Announces the Summer of Code In Space 2012

New submitter juli1 writes "The European Space Agency announced the second edition of the Summer Of Code In Space (SOCIS2012), a similar initiative to the Google Summer of Code but more related to space software. The goal is to support students in contributing to open source projects that are connected to the space domain. Students' contribution is reviewed by selected mentoring organizations and likely reversed to the main branch of each project. According to the time-line, mentoring organizations can apply now and accepted students would start their projects beginning of August and write code until October. Upon successful completion of the program, students will receive 4000 euros."

Comments

hopefully something better than this

[Anonymous Coward]

import time;

warnees = ('Will Robinson', 'Penny Robinson', 'Judy Robinson', 'Dr. Smith')
interval = 1
for warnee in warnees:
      time.sleep(interval)
      print( "Warning,", warnee, ", warning!")
      interval *= 2

Re:hopefully something better than this

[Svippy]

It's danger, Will Robinson, danger.

Re:hopefully something better than this

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

print( "Warning,", warnee, ", warning!")

It's Danger, Will Robinson you ignorant twit.

Re:hopefully something better than this

[busyqth]

import time;
warnees = ('Will Robinson', 'Penny Robinson', 'Judy Robinson', 'Dr. Smith')
interval = 1
for warnee in warnees:

Spacefaring civilizations don't use toy languages like this.

Re:hopefully something better than this

[gstoddart]

It's Danger, Will Robinson you ignorant twit.

Or not ..., according to wiki

Despite the popularity of the phrase, it was only said once on the show. This was during episode 11 of season 3 "The Deadliest of the Species". The Robot gave warnings intermittently to Will and the other crew members of the Jupiter 2, in the form of the expressions "Warning!" and "Danger!"

The robot actually did say "warning", a whole lot more than he ever said that.

Re:hopefully something better than this

[Noughmad]

Universal translator. Or babelchip, if you prefer.

There is no summer in space

[Mister Liberty]

She may be in heaven though...

Cool.

[idontgno]

Maybe they'll get some coders who know how to avoid integer overflow in engine control software..

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow," right?

Re:Cool.

[busyqth]

It wouldn't have happened if they has just programmed everything in javascript instead of using an obscure, baroque language like Ada.

Re:Cool.

[Qwertie]

You may as well ask programmers to never make a mistake, or people in general, for that matter. I remember reading the report on the disaster. It wasn't just that a 16-bit variable overflowed. It overflowed in a noncritical system, which led to the shutdown of the main Inertial Reference System and the backup, leaving nothing to fly the rocket. I don't have the report handy, but it was roughly four problems in combination that brought down the rocket: the bug itself, lack of testing for the bug with altered telemetry (the test telemetry used in simulation was significantly different from the real-life trajectory), failure to handle the exception, and the assumption that an unhandled exception indicated hardware failure (causing the main and backup computer to both shut down). Software always has bugs. One must be sure to do enough testing to find them, and (if failure is obscenely costly) to plan out some sane ways to handle unexpected bugs in the field.

ESA should be expanded in the title

[VGPowerlord]

Since ESA already has a meaning in the software world, it would be prudent to expand the acronym in the subject. After all, they wouldn't want to be mistaken for the other ESA.

Darn

[Anonymous Coward]

From the title, I assumed I would get the opportunity to spend the summer on the ISS writing code :P.

Entry

[fartrader]

public class Universe
{
public double size ()
{
return Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY;
}
}

I accept cash, credit or paypal.

Re:Entry

[Noughmad]

What makes you think it's positive?

Re:Entry

[fartrader]

The clear evidence that Tandoori Mixed Grill and Nachos Supreme exist.

Is this truly open?

[WindBourne]

As in, can anybody apply from any nation or this only for those in the nations that support ESA?

Re:Is this truly open?

[morrison]

I believe the decision last year was that a student from any nation may apply, but they must be attending a university within the European Union.

Not really any less open than limiting the participation to full-time accredited university students. Unlike Google, their funding source isn't commercial, so it makes sense to try and keep it within their tax base. Moreover, I think explanation last year was something along the lines of there being an ESA mandate stating that more than 50% of their spending must stay within the EU.

As I see it, their money their rules. Nobody has to participate. It's great to see a large governmental organization stepping up to directly support open source regardless.

Re:Is this truly open?

[WindBourne]

Oh, I full agree with it. In fact, I think that America/NASA should do the same. For example, our funding of a private launcher should be based on being American products, or at least American/partners only.

What has SOCIS 2011 achieved ?

[Taco Cowboy]

Since this is the second instalment of SOCIS, I looked up SOCIS 2011's site -- http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2011/

And guess what?

There is no listing of what they did, nor what they had achieved, nor any project, nor program, nor nothing that they can convince anyone to participate on SOCIS 2012

Wonder why taxpayers of Europe are allowing this scam to go on ?

What I mean is, at the very least the SOCIS people should have let the world know what they have done, what kind of achievement they have attained, in past year's SOCIS, before announcing this year's SOCIS
 

Re:What has SOCIS 2011 achieved ?

[morrison]

Search and ye shall find, lazy troll: http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2011/?q=node/16