My Journey to Google Summer of Code From First Attempt to Final Success

The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to students who complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. The program is open to university students aged 18 or over.

I first heard about Google Summer of Code during my freshmen year of college. Every C.S. (Computer Science Undergraduate) guy was like, have you met that senior? He cracked GSoC last year, it’s super tough. And I was like — Is it like cracking IIT? Because if it is I am done with that Shit. I just prepared my ass off and didn’t get that.

Later on, I joined a club known as Code Club(Currently an Instructor at Code Club) where seniors used to teach us about basic programming. They mentioned something about GSoC one day, actually one of the founding members of Code Club was a GSoC alumnus. He motivated us to take part even if some of us were new to coding at that time.

I was a complete newbie and didn’t know anything about OpenSource.

Still, I thought of trying and sent my proposal to an Org.

The project was about working on an extension to import stuff from Blender to Godot(An Open Source gaming Engine). I had no idea how would I create an extension and import stuff from the blender.

The Result — I failed(Obviously) but I learned a lot of things and that’s what it’s all about right?

1. I learnt a bit of Blender. And I still use it.
2. I learnt GDScript( Godot uses it) — More about Godot.
3. I learnt basic Git/Github.
4. Most important of all I knew what GSoC it, how to write a proposal and how to contribute.

Project Info — Unfortunately this project has been removed from the Archives.

I don’t recommend it but here is my shitty proposal(unedited) if you insist on reading it!

The main motive was actually to prepare for the second time and that’s what life is, everything is practice until you finally do it!

The second try and this time, I did it!

Well, it was that time of the year again. And this time I was ready!

It was December of 2022 when I first started searching for organisations.

I had recently developed my interest in Blockchain technology and I was excited to work on blockchain-related projects, so, I started looking for organisations that use blockchain.

I spent days searching for organisations and their previous projects(based on blockchain) but I only found a few e.g. Score-lab, Matrix. Then I spend the next few days understanding the previous year’s projects and the workflow of the organisations. Also, I started sending introductory messages to these organisations. Sooner I lost interest because I wasn’t getting any replies and without any help, I wasn’t able to understand the workflow, so I felt lost and after a few days, I left these organisations and started looking for something easier.

After a few days, a senior of mine suggested Coala. He said that Coala is good for beginners and he was right, they had newcomer issues on GitHub. I was happy for a while. I spent the next few days solving elementary issues and got that Coala contributor batch.

Well, it didn’t take me long to realise that I wasn’t alone there. It’s not like a piece of cake is waiting for me. Coala was filled with a lot of contributors.

My competitors had already merged a lot of PRs in the main project and I had a meagre chance of succeeding. So, I got depressed and thought of taking a few days off.

It was mid of January and I was having all those negative thoughts again. Till now I had tried in few more organisations but I didn’t have any luck in finding something that I felt like I belonged to.

But it wasn’t over yet.

On February 6, new projects for GSoC 2023 were announced. And two of my friends sat down and started looking for our type of project.

It took exactly three days to go through every organisation and their projects. Following is a list of all the organisations I shortlisted for myself.

I spent the next few days introducing myself to these organisations and then crossed those that weren’t very active or there was too much crowd for participation.

In the end, the top 3 listed above remained.

So, the next step was to start my contribution and then decide which one was better.

From the beginning, people from EOS(sub-org of Python Software Foundation) were very active and there wasn’t much crowd(maybe because it was the first time they were participating in GSoC). Plus the project I decided to work on, included designing on Adobe XD, which I was familiar with.

After just two weeks of participation, I knew that EOS was the one for me, I stopped messing around and started putting all my effort into this one organisation.

Later in March, I bunked my college classes and spent a week (day and night) working on my proposal.

Here is my awesome proposal for GSoC 2023.

After that, I had an interview and that was it. I got selected.