Re: [eigen] Google Summer of Code

[Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I just noticed that Scilab is offering a GSOC project to port to Eigen:

http://wiki.scilab.org/Ideas_of_development_for_Scilab
http://wiki.scilab.org/Contributor_-_Eigen

Benoit

2010/3/6 Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1@xxxxxxxxx>:
> 2010/3/6 Stephen McCracken <stevemcc@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>>
>> On Mar 6, 2010, at 12:08 PM, Benoit Jacob wrote:
>>
>> That's exactly the problem --- what we're really looking for is people
>> who are likely to turn into long term contributors, to take care of
>> boring stuff in the project, etc.
>>
>> How many of your core contributors use Eigen in the course of their paid
>> employment?
>
> Most of them, except me.
>
>>  In my case, I'm unlikely to become a core contributor unless I
>> can get a job at a FOSS-friendly company (Willow Garage, say) where I use
>> Eigen regularly in my work.  If I did a GSOC project with Eigen, it would
>> significantly improve my chances of getting hired at WG and ultimately
>> becoming an Eigen contributor.
>
> It's great when Eigen contributions help people find jobs. It just
> happened to me. But look at it from our perspective: if you've
> followed this list and the IRC channel for a while, you've seen that
> we (few core devs) spend a lot of time already informally mentoring
> new contributors. It doesn't sounds very interesting to us to enter
> the GSOC to do yet more mentoring with an additional paperwork load,
> when we already have a lot to traffic to handle. Eigen is really
> special in this respect: it's very small and it naturally attracts a
> lot of people.
>
>> Now, it happens that WG also uses Python.  So if my primary goal is to go
>> work for WG, then I might be just as happy doing a SciPy GSOC project.  In
>> that case, I'd be more likely to get hired on a Python-heavy project, and
>> perhaps become a Python core contributor.
>
> Sounds like a SciPy GSOC would be a nice match for you :)
>
>> So I think that mentoring a GSOC project does increase the probability that
>> your student will become a core developer, even if the student is initially
>> "agnostic".  Whether or not that uncertain benefit is worth the investment
>> of your time, I can't say.
>
> There are lots of reasons why this makes more sense for SciPy/NumPy
> than it does for us. They're a far bigger project, they have an
> academic mindset, and they probably can offer a lot more accessible
> yet useful problems to solve for newcomers (one area where we're not
> very good - the learning curve in eigen development is very steep).
>
> Benoit
>