Symmetry Autumn of Code 2023 Result

[Mike Parker]

If you've been paying attention to the forums over the past few 
months, you'll have seen weekly updates from the three SAOC 2023 
participants: Teodor Dutu (his third SAOC!), Emmanuel Nyarko, and 
Prajwal S N. Congratulations to each of them for making it all 
the way to the end. The work the put in was both well done and 
valuable for the D ecosystem.

Additional congratulations are in order for Prajwal S N, whom the 
judges selected for the final $1000 payment and the free trip to 
DConf '24. Well done!

Prajwal worked on modifying dfmt to use the DMD AST. Along the 
way, he made some improvements to dmd. He currently is working on 
identifying and fixing bugs and plans to get the new dfmt into a 
production-ready state.

As for the other two, they are still going forward with their 
projects.

Teo has worked on converting DRuntime hooks to templates during 
and between three SAOC editions. He [gave a talk about it at 
DConf '22](https://youtu.be/dsa8GWL6TUo). He's got the finish 
line in sight now. Once he crosses it, he says he'll be on the 
lookout for further opportunities to research and improve the D 
compilers.

Emmanuel set out to hook D up to some C++ containers. He made a 
good bit of progress on that front and plans to continue. He 
tells me he will be looking for other opportunities to contribute 
to D beyond this project in the future.

Thanks to Razvan Nitu and Mathias Lang for taking on the mentor 
role this time. Razvan mentored Teo and Prajwal, Mathias mentored 
Emmanuel.

Thanks also to Átila Neves, Robert Schadek, and Jonathan M. Davis 
for serving as judges. That's a tougher job than one might think.

As for the future, I can announce already that SAOC 2024 is a go. 
I'll put out the call for applications in a few months. Thanks to 
Symmetry Investments for their ongoing support for the D 
ecosystem through SAOC and more.