{"thread":{"id":"36036","subject":"My advice for GSoC applicants","startedAt":"2014-03-03T10:45:28Z","lastAt":"2014-03-04T07:58:15Z","messageCount":5,"participants":["Michael Haggerty","Philip Oakley","Rick Umali","Junio C Hamano"],"isPatch":false,"patchVersion":null,"patchTotal":null},"messages":[{"id":"235869","messageId":"53145D48.3040603@alum.mit.edu","threadId":"36036","inReplyTo":null,"subject":"My advice for GSoC applicants","fromName":"Michael Haggerty","fromEmail":"mhagger@alum.mit.edu","sentAt":"2014-03-03T10:45:28Z","receivedAt":"2014-03-03T10:45:28Z","isPatch":false,"sender":{"key":"mhagger@alum.mit.edu","avatar":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/119718?v=4"},"body":"Hi,\n\nBased on my experience so far as a first-time Google Summer of Code\nmentor, I just wrote a blog article containing some hopefully useful\nadvice for students applying to the program. Please note that this is\nmy personal opinion only and doesn't necessarily reflect the views of\nthe Git/libgit2 projects as a whole.\n\n My secret tip for GSoC success\n\nhttp://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-secret-tip-for-gsoc-success.html\n\nMichael\n\n-- \nMichael Haggerty\nmhagger@alum.mit.edu\nhttp://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/\n"},{"id":"235884","messageId":"24D54C99D151474B9B6D7DC05405EC5E@PhilipOakley","threadId":"36036","inReplyTo":"53145D48.3040603@alum.mit.edu","subject":"Re: My advice for GSoC applicants","fromName":"Philip Oakley","fromEmail":"philipoakley@iee.org","sentAt":null,"receivedAt":"2014-03-03T16:32:37Z","isPatch":false,"sender":{"key":"philipoakley@iee.email","avatar":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/914343?v=4"},"body":"From: \"Michael Haggerty\" \nCc: \"Dmitry Dolzhenko\" ; \"Sun He\"\n; \"Brian Gesiak\" ; \"Tanay\nAbhra\" ; \"Kyriakos Georgiou\"\n; \"Siddharth Goel\"\n; \"Guanglin Xu\" ;\n\"Karthik Nayak\" ; \"Alberto Corona\"\n; \"Jacopo Notarstefano\"\n\n\n> Hi,\n>\n> Based on my experience so far as a first-time Google Summer of Code\n> mentor, I just wrote a blog article containing some hopefully useful\n> advice for students applying to the program. Please note that this is\n> my personal opinion only and doesn't necessarily reflect the views of\n> the Git/libgit2 projects as a whole.\n>\n> My secret tip for GSoC success\n>\n> http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-secret-tip-for-gsoc-success.html\n>\n> Michael\n>\n> -- \n> Michael Haggerty\n> mhagger@alum.mit.edu\n> http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/\n> --\n\nIn particular I liked : \" If the documentation is unclear, it is OK to\nask for a clarification, but then _fix the documentation_ so that your\nmentor never has to answer the same question again.\"\n\nSo the rhetorical question(s) for students would be :-\n\n- was the Git documentation useful - did you see the README?, did it\nlead, easily, to the useful places [1]? How could the wording/layout be\nimproved for the first time reader?\n\n- which points of clarification were most useful and are they in the\ndocumentation? Where should they be included?\n\n- which points needed repeating often, and why? Where was the\ndisconnect?\n\n- what would a patch look like...\n\nPhilip Oakley\n\n[1] README; INSTALL; Documentation/SubmittingPatches;\nDocumentation/CodingGuidelines;\n"},{"id":"235886","messageId":"CALKcQ2aU1u9deWt2RqTJk17yfk=SoRhEPSA=BX04ZagGhQNi_A@mail.gmail.com","threadId":"36036","inReplyTo":"53145D48.3040603@alum.mit.edu","subject":"Re: My advice for GSoC applicants","fromName":"Rick Umali","fromEmail":"rickumali@gmail.com","sentAt":"2014-03-03T17:12:38Z","receivedAt":"2014-03-03T17:12:38Z","isPatch":false,"sender":{"key":"rickumali@gmail.com","avatar":null},"body":"On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 5:45 AM, Michael Haggerty wrote:\n> My secret tip for GSoC success\n>\n> http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-secret-tip-for-gsoc-success.html\n\nI enjoyed reading that BLOG post. I daresay some of the points you\nraise are pertinent for any new contributor to any open-source code\nbase.\n"},{"id":"235927","messageId":"xmqqa9d6or0p.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com","threadId":"36036","inReplyTo":"53145D48.3040603@alum.mit.edu","subject":"Re: My advice for GSoC applicants","fromName":"Junio C Hamano","fromEmail":"gitster@pobox.com","sentAt":"2014-03-03T22:29:10Z","receivedAt":"2014-03-03T22:29:10Z","isPatch":false,"sender":{"key":"gitster@pobox.com","avatar":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/54884?v=4"},"body":"Michael Haggerty writes:\n\n> Based on my experience so far as a first-time Google Summer of Code\n> mentor, I just wrote a blog article containing some hopefully useful\n> advice for students applying to the program. Please note that this is\n> my personal opinion only and doesn't necessarily reflect the views of\n> the Git/libgit2 projects as a whole.\n>\n> My secret tip for GSoC success\n>\n> http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-secret-tip-for-gsoc-success.html\n\nThanks for writing this.\n\nAlso thanks for the MicroProject approach to introduce potential\nstudents and the community.\n\nMultiple students seem to be hitting the same microprojects (aka \"we\nare running out of micros\"), which might be a bit unfortunate. I\nthink the original plan might have been that for a student candidate\nto pass, his-or-her patch must hit my tree and queued somewhere, but\nwith these duplicates I do not think it is fair to disqualify those\nwho interacted with reviewers well but solved an already solved\nmicro.\n\nEven with the duplicates I think we are learning how well each\nstudent respond to reviews (better ones even seem to pick up lessons\nfrom reviews on others' threads that tackle micros different from\ntheir own) and what his-or-her general cognitive ability is.\n"},{"id":"235976","messageId":"53158797.6040405@alum.mit.edu","threadId":"36036","inReplyTo":"xmqqa9d6or0p.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com","subject":"Re: My advice for GSoC applicants","fromName":"Michael Haggerty","fromEmail":"mhagger@alum.mit.edu","sentAt":"2014-03-04T07:58:15Z","receivedAt":"2014-03-04T07:58:15Z","isPatch":false,"sender":{"key":"mhagger@alum.mit.edu","avatar":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/119718?v=4"},"body":"On 03/03/2014 11:29 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:\n> [...]\n> Multiple students seem to be hitting the same microprojects (aka \"we\n> are running out of micros\"), which might be a bit unfortunate. I\n> think the original plan might have been that for a student candidate\n> to pass, his-or-her patch must hit my tree and queued somewhere, but\n> with these duplicates I do not think it is fair to disqualify those\n> who interacted with reviewers well but solved an already solved\n> micro.\n> \n> Even with the duplicates I think we are learning how well each\n> student respond to reviews (better ones even seem to pick up lessons\n> from reviews on others' threads that tackle micros different from\n> their own) and what his-or-her general cognitive ability is.\n\nSo far the list contains 10 microprojects, and as of yesterday I had\nseen 10 students attempt them. If I had made it clear from the\nbeginning that each student should pick only one project, then we\nwouldn't be in all that bad a situation.\n\nI might have time today to look for some more microprojects for the list\nand to mark the ones that have already been attempted. But other list\nregulars should FEEL ENCOURAGED to submit microprojects to add to the\nlist. (Either submit them as a pull request to the GitHub repository\nthat contains the text [1] or to the mailing list with CC to me.) I was\nhoping that writing the text and adding the first batch of microprojects\nwould be enough to get the ball rolling, but I'm not sure I have enough\ntime to be the one and only microproject muse.\n\nOn the other hand I've been very happy and grateful that other people\nhave taken a lot of time to interact with the students and give them\nfeedback on the mailing list. I definitely think the students are\ngetting a realistic taste of how our community works.\n\nMichael\n\n[1] https://github.com/git/git.github.io\n\n-- \nMichael Haggerty\nmhagger@alum.mit.edu\nhttp://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/\n"}]}