SAOC 2023 Projects

[Mike Parker]

Milestone 1 of the sixth edition of Symmetry Autumn of Code 
kicked off on September 15th! We have three coders hacking away 
on D projects for the next four months. You should be reading 
their first weekly forum updates very soon.

So here's what's happening this time around:

* __Replace DRuntime Hooks with Templates__: Teodor Dutu is back 
for a third stint in SAOC. Not only has he worked on this project 
in two previous SAOCs, he's been working on it in between when 
time allows. [The abstract of his DConf '22 
talk](https://dconf.org/2022/#teodord) provides an overview of 
the project (or [you can skip straight to the 
video](https://youtu.be/dsa8GWL6TUo)).
* __Interfacing D with C++ Associative Containers__: Emmanuel 
Nyarko is a first-time SAOC participant who aims to improve D's 
interface with the C++ standard library. Specifically, Emmanuel 
will be working on bindings for the C++ `std::set`, `std::map`, 
and `std::unordered_map` containers. Mathias Lang is the mentor.
* __Replace libdparse with the DMD Library in dfmt__: Prajwal S 
N, another first-time SAOC participant, will be working towards 
removing libdparse from [the dfmt 
tool](https://github.com/dlang-community/dfmt) and replacing it 
with DMD as a library. You may recall that Lucian Danescu did 
some work in SAOC 2022 to enable DMD to be used as a replacement 
for libdparse in tooling, specifically targeting D-Scanner (you 
can [watch his DConf '22 talk](https://youtu.be/JYkb3PjIn4c) if 
you need to refresh your memory). This new project will get us 
closer to having a DMD-as-a-library tooling ecosystem.

This year's judges are Átila Neves, Robert Schadek, and Jonathan 
M. Davis.

Thanks to Symmetry for continuing to fund this event every year, 
and good luck to the three programmers working to improve the D 
ecosystem!