SAOC 2024 Result && DConf '25 Dates Locked In

[Mike Parker]

The final milestone of Symmetry Autumn of Code 2024 ended on 
January 14. The two remaining participants, Royal Simpson Pinto 
and Vlăduț-Ștefan Riciu, had two weeks to write up their final 
milestone reports. Once I received them, I handed them off to the 
judges (Jonathan Davis, Atila Neves, and Robert Schadek), and 
they in turn had a week to decide which of the two would recieve 
the final $1000 payment and a free trip to DConf '25.

The verdict came in on time, I informed Royal and Vlad on 
February 7, had acknowledgements from them by the next day, and 
then promptly forgot to announce the result.

Royal has been improving D error messages with Max Haughton as 
mentor, and Vlad has been working on upstreaming his previous 
integration of DMD-as-a-library and D-Scanner with Razvan Nitu as 
mentor.

I want to stress that both candidates did outstanding work 
throughout the event. They worked around challenges and problems, 
gained valuable experience, and learned some lessons along the 
way. They kept up with the SAOC requirements of posting weekly 
updates and writing Milestone Reports and worked with their 
mentors to get through to the end. I invite you to congratulate 
them both for the solid effort they put in.

The award of the final payment and the DConf trip is a motivation 
factor, something to work toward. It's acknowledgement of a job 
well done. The judges often have difficulty determining who 
should receive the award, as there's usually very little 
separating the final candidates in terms of performance. They 
look for distinctions where they can find them. I can only recall 
one instance out of all seven editions of SAOC in which the 
decision was unanimous. One year, it was split three ways!

That said, I invite you to offer additional kudos to Royal 
Simpson Pinto for his selection by the judges to receive the SAOC 
2025 award. Royal tells us he intends to keep contributing to D, 
and we welcome his contributions!

I'm looking forward to congratulating him in person in London 
later this year. If you'd like to do the same, then please mark 
your calendars for August 19-22. We'll be back at CodeNode, 
courtesy of Symmetry Investments.

If you've already got a talk in mind, I'm ready to start taking 
submissions. Please send your proposal *in a text-based format* 
to social at dlang.org. It should contain the following information:

* Title
* Kind (talk, panel, contest, etc.)
* Expected Duration (should be 25-40 minutes)
* Target Audience (e.g., beginner, intermediate, advanced, all)
* Abstract - the "elevator pitch" in one paragraph (this goes on 
dconf.org if you're selected)
* Extended Description - additional details you believe are 
relevant for evaluating the submission)
* Brief Speaker Biography

We give priority to submissions on any topic directly related to 
the D programming language, though we welcome submissions on more 
general programming topics. Tell us about your D project, a 
problem you solved with D, an interesting algorithm you 
implemented, and so on. We also like to see first-time speakers, 
so don't be shy!

I'll have the website up by early March. I expect early-bird 
registration to open shortly thereafter.

See you in London!