Google Summer of Code 2011 application

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Tuesday 08 March 2011 20:34:00 %u wrote:
> >> I have the same feeling. I'd like to see such projects. But I
> 
> believe students are more likely to pick feature-oriented projects.
> The stuff that sounds cool.
> 
> > And I wouldn't be surprised if Google as well is also more likely
> 
> to accepted feature-oriented projects than bug-fix ones.
> 
> Wait, I think I'm confused -- which ones are "feature-oriented
> projects" and which ones aren't?
> 
> I'm only a single voice, but for my student perspective, I frankly
> wouldn't waste my time joining a benchmarking project; however, I
> would definitely consider helping get the compiler bugs fixed. After
> all, if it's open-source, then students should be able to help
> contribute, right? What's the point of restricting the compiler work
> to beyond their reach, especially if that's what needs some of the
> most help in and especially if they might be more interested in it?

The compiler is just one component. druntime and Phobos are part of it as well. 
A good example of a feature-oriented project for druntime would be working on 
the GC. For Phobos, stuff like a logging module or an xml module would be good 
examples of feature-oriented projects. They're tasks to implement or 
significantly improve a specific feature, not work on general bugs.

- Jonathan M Davis