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GSOC Application Template

James George edited this page Feb 5, 2020 · 2 revisions

Be sure to read through the GSoC Student Instructions first!

Writing your proposal

To be considered, a GSoC application must have a written proposal submitted to https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com.

If you want, you can start a wiki page to work on your proposal at https://github.com/madlabsinc/mevn-cli. If you add your proposal there, we will help you edit it and provide feedback (though understand that we will not help you write it). To maintain a consistent naming scheme, title your application: "GSoC 2020 Application : ". Note that your final application must be submitted at https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com, so do not worry about the formatting of your application on the wiki, as you will have to reformat it there. You should not be too concerned with the formatting on Google's website either, as we understand that the text editor there is not the best for making things look nice formatting-wise. We are more concerned with the content of your application, and that it is readable.

You may be able to get equivalent formatting in the GSoC portal from the wiki by copying the webpage contents or messing with the HTML source, but you shouldn't worry about it too much.

You should include the following information in your proposal:

Title

Please use a succinct title that describes your proposal. Do not include the words "GSoC", "2020", or your name in the proposal title.

About You

Please put this information at the top of your proposal.

  • Your full name

  • University / current enrollment

  • Short bio / overview of your background

  • How can we contact you (email, GitHub username, etc.)? This information will help us associate all of your various usernames with you.

    • Email
    • GitHub username
    • Any other user name you want us to know about

Also, please use your full real name in your GSoC portal profile, so that it appears in the proposal list.

About You as a Developer

In your project proposal let us know about your programming experience. Don't worry if you don't know mevn-cli or git. We will teach you what you need to know.

  • What platform do you use to code? What editor do you prefer and why?

  • What is your experience programming? Tell us about something you have created.

  • What is your experience with JavaScript? What are your favorite features of JavaScript that are lacking in most other common programming languages? What, in your opinion, is the most advanced JavaScript language feature or standard library functionality that you have used?

  • What is your favorite feature of mevn-cli? Demonstrate it here with a cool example.

  • Have you ever used git or another version control system?

About the Project

Answer the following questions in your proposal:

  • What do you want to achieve?

  • What excites you about this project? Why did you choose it?

  • What qualifications do you have to implement your idea?

  • What have other people done on this idea? Has it been implemented before? (hint: it probably has) Are there any papers or blog posts about it?

  • How much time do you plan to invest in the project before, during, and after the Summer of Code? (we expect full time 40h/week during GSoC, but better make this explicit) If you plan to take any vacations over the summer, let us know about it here.

  • Please provide a schedule of how this time will be spent on sub-tasks of the project over the period of the summer. While this is only preliminary, we will use it to help monitor your progress throughout the program. Also understand that during the project you will issue weekly progress reports against that plan on your blog.

  • In planning your project, it is good to note where along the way you could formulate a pull request. These would be points where you can have a self contained and well documented and tested piece of functionality. Doing this at several points during the summer helps to keep branch merges reasonable and code reviews manageable. A big code dump at the end of the summer will likely be hard to review and merge before the project deadline.

  • Please do not verbatim copy text from the ideas page, or from other people's discussions about your project, but rewrite it in your own words. If you include any significant text or code from another source in your application, it must be accompanied with a proper citation. All papers or references that you use or plan to use must also be cited. Put all this in a "References" section at the bottom of your application.

You do not need to format your application as a question/answer format for the above questions, but we expect to see all of the above questions answered in your application somewhere.