Personal Experience with GSoC

[gusty lily]

My project was about the internationalization of a set of command line tools that is written in C++

Here is an article that I wrote about my project: https://ahmedsiam.com/gsoc-2023-report-internationalization-of-apertium-tools

Well, I guess such question won't be useful for most of the readers, so openning a thread will be better than just chatting in the main channel.

[rose reef]

So this project is on software engineering branch if i get it right?

What previous knowledge did you have before applying and getting accepted into Gsoc? (and backgroundi n general, do you have a degree, are you an undergrad, etc)

[gusty lily]

Kind of yes.

[gusty lily]

C++, OOP

I was a first year computer science student.

I also had some git basics

I had some programming experience before I go to college but forgot most of it because I got busy in studying other things for a year before college.

During application, I learnt some basics about a library called ICU4C that I used extensively during the project.

And learnt a bit about the build system used on the project (called autotools)

[rose reef]

were there many people who applied to the same position you applied to? i mean, is there high competition for a proposal / intership? This is a very general question and depends on the intership of course, but i ask about your personal experience.

[gusty lily]

I am not aware whether anyone applied to the same project as me or not.

I guess not.

[rose reef]

ok. I dont have any more questions to ask you about what you did as i am not familiar with cpp, but i need to know a bit more about the work environment and the intership its self.

did you have a lot of help when coding? could you reach out wheneve you needed to? (to a mentor or someone else)? How were the working ours?

[gusty lily]

I got help from the org members during the application and coding period.

Regarding the amount, I am not sure what is counted as "a lot".

I usually ask for help through public communication channels not private ones.

[rose reef]

What about hours? Were you full time? If yes, did you have to be online any out of office hours or weekends? In case something got deployed in a different timezone, something crashed etc.

[gusty lily]

This depends on the projects size.

My project size was medium where it is expected to have part-time job like commitment (~175H throughout the coding period)

There were no time tracking, no obligation to work/be online at a specific times.

What matters is whether you deliver expected results on time or not.

At least this was my experience during gsoc.
Your experience may be a bit different.

[rose reef]

Thats very important. Can we talk about salary? I heard contributors get the money after the intership is over, is that true?

[gusty lily]

It's called a stipend not salary.
Yes, you recieve some money during and at the end of the program.

The exact amount depends on where you live.

You can find details about that here: https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/help/student-stipends