DigitalMars' GSoC application has been rejected

[Brad Roberts]

On 2/27/14, 3:21 PM, Craig Dillabaugh wrote:
> On Thursday, 27 February 2014 at 22:25:27 UTC, Brad Roberts wrote:
>> On 2/27/14, 2:03 PM, Craig Dillabaugh wrote:
>>> On Thursday, 27 February 2014 at 21:59:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 2/27/14, 1:42 PM, Craig Dillabaugh wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> In that case, as Yoda would say:
>>>>>
>>>>> Volunteer to prepare GSoC 2015 proposal I shall.
>>>>>
>>>>> Do you have copies of past submissions as a guideline, or is it just
>>>>> what is on the Wiki.
>>>>
>>>> Congratulations and good luck! Stay tuned to the general GSoC process
>>>> and I hope you'll be around in December :o).
>>>>
>>>> Google doesn't save past submissions. We have our older gsoc pages on
>>>> dlang.org and the wiki. I think Walter saved some form data.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Andrei
>>>
>>> I will try to keep an eye on what the successful projects do this
>>> summer, that may give me so ideas.
>>
>> Also, keep in mind that GSoC is pretty much two things:
>>
>> 1) a nice little pay check for students
>> 2) a bit of structure around getting work done
>>
>> We can still do #2 without #1.  And we don't need google to make it
>> happen.  How about trying a practice run despite not having google
>> tossing in the funding?
>
> So you mean D Summer of Code?
>
> I had actually been thinking of proposing having a D mentoring
> program.  Similar to:
>
> https://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/development
> (at the bottom)
>
> Experienced D developers, who feel they could use
> on a specific project, or who would be otherwise interested in
> taking on an 'apprentice' could list projects they would like
> to see someone take on.  Interested developers could browse
> through and see if any of the proposed projects piqued their
> interest.
>
> However, that doesn't entirely fulfill #2 in your list.
> The 'student' needs some motivation to complete the project
> I suppose.  Perhaps a DConf T-shirt autographed by Walter and
> Andrei or something :o)

Call it whatever you want.. Ideally it's not a specific one time (or 
recurring) event, but rather the normal way development happens. 
Someone wants to help, so they do.  There's already appropriate mailing 
lists / forums / newsgroups for interaction.  There's lots of work to be 
done.  What's needed is people to step up.  Adding a little structure 
and making it known that the help is available is all good and would 
likely help tip more people from thinking about it into doing it.

The appropriate forum / mailing lists:
     dmd-internals
     D-runtime
     phobos
     D.gnu
     digitalmars.D.ldc

All of which are available via forum.dlang.org or lists.puremagic.com. 
All of which contain multiple people who are generally very eager to help.

Following bug reports and pull requests and watching how fixes and 
changes are made is also a pretty good way to learn about the code base. 
  If the commits and code changes don't make sense, feel free to ask the 
submitter (via private email or publicly on the appropriate forum, 
preferably the latter) to help explain the change -- chances are more 
comments would be useful to more than just the asker.

As to motivation, personally, I'm not sure we want someone who isn't 
self motivated.  That said, I recognize that sometimes it takes a little 
something extra to incent getting past the learning curve which can be 
daunting for any project.  I find that financial incentives, like GSoC, 
tend to attract that disappear shortly after the incentive is removed. 
The group of people that contribute today are all volunteers, up to and 
including Walter and Andrei.  Some have agreements with their employers 
to spend work time in various amounts, but that's the exception rather 
than the rule.

My 2 cents,
Brad