Projects for GSoC

[Sergey]

On Monday, 20 January 2025 at 08:45:03 UTC, RazvanN wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> We are now working on applying to GSoC

Just some foreign comment from community-member.
Of course I don't know how to do better and more properly, but 
decided just share my 5cents on potential projects:

Check projects of other langs from the recent years. Try to 
identify some patterns. Try to understand/hack the logic of the 
GSoC committee - what they prefer.

 From my own (very limited) analysis, I would assume GSoC 
interested more in interesting, innovative, fresh and hot 
(khm-ML/AI-khm) topics, that could be potentially useful for wide 
audience of open source/science/cutting-edge technologies 
participants.

Remove old list of "abandoned" (this list doesn't look very well) 
project ideas and create new fresh list with updated and 
confirmed mentors.

Google most probably is not interested in internal things of D 
compiler and infrastructure itself. So maybe consider projects 
that use D (compiler/std lib/ecosystem) as a tool that can bring 
value for wider number of users.

Also those projects should be interesting for students and have 
some potential application. Maybe forget more about individual 
compiler stuff - and try to think about more general stuff.

Let me give some examples:

Fixing bugs / docs inside D compiler - bad. Relevant only for D - 
bad as well. No one else care about that (outside very limited D 
community).

Fix some code for GC in D - bad, but try to implement new 
approach in GC research inside D compiler, that in case good 
results could be implemented in other solutions - good.

Maybe focus more on ecosystem and interop, than internal only-D 
relevant tasks.

For example, make good and "official" JVM interop module (based 
on previous work and great JNI library from ARSD) - could be also 
good, because it gives some potential for Android (Google 
product) ecosystem.

Some langs in 2023/2024 made some numerical/AI 
libraries/projects, but since Ilya left D community maybe DLF 
will need to find new mentors for Mir/GPU/DlangScience projects..

Maybe revised PyD update and code improvement could be an example 
of good project (Google loves Python as well - and similar 
projects of Python interop were in the past)

Try to point out on strong parts of D, but keep in mind and be 
careful with complexity estimation.

Ability to "write fast, read fast, and run fast" - is good. So 
maybe consider to think about the project that 1 student could 
make in some limited time, but the task/project should not be 
"too hard". Maybe have several levels of complexity in the list.

Consider to have popular projects/sub-eco-systems in the list (to 
show the audience) - like Inochi2D, Auburn Sounds, Vibe.d (many 
repo orgs with a lot of stars in GH)

General CS tasks could be also interesting. Like "general 
research about ranges" could be potentially helpful for C++ and 
Carbon (and now even for Go).
But lack of proper data structures in the lang is limiting this 
topic.

Maybe try to think in a product way as well.
Web: any web standards Google can like. Oauth library, async HTTP 
client, WASM support, WebRTC/WebGL, HTTP2/3..

Google has several pictures libs: maybe JPEG XL improvements for 
Gamut. Or WebP support..

Google is doing ARM chips(Axion): so port of DMD to ARM(with 
description of fast compilation step) and maybe addition of 
NEON/SVE2 instructions to the intel-intrinsics package projects..

Google is doing quantum chips(Willow): so the project of Timon of 
lang for quantum computing, implemented in D..

Maybe something for ChomeOS: like flawless Dart interop, where 
Dart is doing interface part and D backend/computations..