More mentors needed

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:jm1n44$2ian$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Hello,
>
>
> We have been blessed with quite a few strong proposals, actually more than 
> mentors (unlike last year).
>
> If anyone here is willing to mentor a D project, please let let us know. 
> We're looking for competent and established community members who are 
> willing to guide a student through the hoops of a real project.
>
> Mentoring a GSoC project on D is a great way to make a lasting positive 
> impact on the language. It is hard but rewarding work. Please consider 
> applying, and ask here any questions you might have.
>

I feel like a hypocritical flake for saying this mere days after affirming 
my commitment to my HaxeD/Goldie projects over in the thread "Goldie Parser 
Generator. Haxe language definition."...But unless there are strong 
objections (doubtful), I'd be willing to put those projects on a summer 
hiatus to mentor a DWT, wxD or Android (or *maybe* even iOS) project for 
gsoc since I'm convinced those *are* more important to D.

Here are the reasons a *better qualified mentor than myself* should step up:

    - I haven't actually used DWT or wxD yet. I've never used wxWidgets 
either, and it's been ages since I touched SWT.

    - I'm very new to Android/iOS development myself, and haven't yet tried 
the existing "D on Android/iOS" stuff. Or [the modern incarnation of] GDC or 
LDC at all for that matter.

    - I've barely even touched druntime, other than the little bit involved 
for this trivial core.time pull request: 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime/pull/188

    - I'm awful at scheduling and gauging timeframes longer than a few 
hours.

Here's why I might at least be better than nothing:

    - I'm not likely to overstate my qualifications for this ;)
    - I'm an active, committed, longtime member of the D community.
    - I'm not afraid of writing non-code when needed (really is a skill you 
have to work at).
    - I've been planning to eventually start using SWT or wxD anyway, and I 
have at least *done* GUI stuff before, via Win32 and C#'s WinForms.
    - I *am* going to be doing Android/iOS development this summer anyway 
(albeit in C++), and have already gotten started (via Marmalade).
    - I've contributed to other D projects besides my own ones: Such as DVM 
and RDMD, and a little bit with Phobos (And I feel fairly comfortable with 
Phobos code.)
    - Back in college, I spent some time as a computer science tutor for the 
freshmen.
    - On my last big "real world" project, I was the 
primary-programmer/tech-lead, but we also had a student intern programmer I 
worked with.