Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Summer of Code

In yet another amazing move, Google has decided to pay 410 students to work on open source software during summer. These students have been selected via 'mentoring organisations', which will guide them through the program, as well as judge their results. Hopefully the program will be a resounding success, and Google will be able to repeat it next year, or even set a new trend!

I was very fortunate to be working on something interesting to one of these organisations (the Python Software Foundation, or PSF) as part of my Master's Thesis project, and that I was just planning on adding several large features this summer. Of course, I would have worked on them anyway, but morale was going down, and receiving a google t-shirt is excellent motivation! (The money comes in handy too..) I am very glad to have been selected.

My mentors will be Jeremy Hylton and Brett Cannon, both well known in the Python community and working for Google at the moment. I look forward to interacting with them during the program, and hopefully learning a lot from them. On the university side, my advisor has been and will be Koen Langendoen, co-author of the book 'Modern Compiler Design'.

During the program, I will try to post an update on my progress and experiences at least once every few days. Thanks for reading, and I appreciate any comments!