Google Summer of Code

About a week ago, Google announced the projects selected for this year’s Summer of Code. I am glad to inform that my project, Create a Rich Beam Solving System, for SymPy got selected for GSoC 2018.

SymPy is a Python library for symbolic mathematics. It aims to become a full-featured Computer Algebra System (CAS) while keeping the code as simple as possible in order to be comprehensible and easily extensible.

I entered the world of Open Source a few months back and journey since then was full of learning curves, which I enjoyed the most. You learn something new every time you try to contribute. Your code getting reviewed by other contributors, who are usually packed with more experience than you got, is an added advantage. All this inspired me to spend my summer writing code for open source projects and made me apply for GSoC 2018.

Coding period for this year’s GSoC would start on May 14 and should end by August 6. Prior to the coding period is Community Bonding period (April 23 – May 14) which usually is used for learning more about the organization’s community.

I would be updating this blog every week, keeping track of all the progress I make towards the completion of my project.

Community Bonding

The first month of GSoC is the Community Bonding period. In practice, the community bonding period is all about, well, community bonding. Rather than jumping straight into coding, you’ve got some time to learn about your organization’s processes.

During this period I am expected to

• Discuss the work plan, we would be following this summer, with my mentors and get to know all the tools required for my project.
• Start a Blog to keep a track of my weekly progress. The Blog is required to have an RSS feed. We are expected to have at least one blog post a week, describing our progress for that week.
• Sending a pull request with my blog RSS feed to https://github.com/sympy/planet-sympy. For now, I have created this Blog on WordPress but I would be shifting soon to GitHub pages as they look cleaner and show no ads.
• Review pull requests created by other contributors.

As I am having exams at my university from May 14 until May 26, I would start coding early to cover up for those days. Hopefully, I would be creating my pull request in a day or two.

Till now I have been reviewing #14681, which coincidentally implements one of the points I proposed in my GSoC proposal. Hopefully, I would be creating my first pull request in a day or two.