Google Summer of Code is Coming! For the people who don’t know what GSoC is, it’s basically a very good opportunity to gain coding experience whilst working on actual projects. It happens during summer, it’s in the name so yeah, and it can be compared to following a coding summer camp, but then from home.
Google partners up with open-source projects/organizations and these projects/organizations propose coding projects that need tackling. Students, or people new to open-source, work on these projects with experienced mentors guiding you along the way. Originally GSoC was aimed at students, but people who are new to open-source can also apply.
The duration is twelve weeks, however applications close second of April. During these 12 weeks you’ll dive into real-world coding, contribute to open-source projects, and get paid for it! To me personally, the biggest benefit I see for GSoC is that it’s a fantastic chance to gain experience. Because you get a chance to improve your coding skills with a mentor, gain experience with open-source development in general, gain experience of working in team or to work on something with multiple individuals, and you’ll also get a nice entry on your resume.
Check out Google Summer of Code https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/ to learn more about this coding adventure!
Will I join?
I am considering joining as I would really want to gain some more experience of how bigger open source-projects work, so I can take the gained knowledge to improve GoZen and other open-source projects which I may start in the future. I had been looking at FFmpeg, to apply for one of their projects but I’m afraid that I don’t have the required skills nor time as most projects for FFmpeg are around 350 hours.
There are enough other projects and some of them appear to be rather easy so I think I could find something if I want to. However, time could be a problem for me as I still have work on GoZen and my YouTube channels. Would be a great experience though and possibly help me on my quest to find a full time programming job in the future, so who knows. Maybe I’ll apply, maybe I’ll just work on my own stuff instead.
Should you join?
If you are a student, or you want to get started with open-source development, than this is probably one of your b est opportunities you can get. Starting with open-source development can be difficult so having a mentor who can guide you through everything is extremely valuable in my opinion. However, take in mind that it takes twelve weeks and will take up many hours, there is a reason why a lot of projects say 350 hours which basically equals to a minimum of 4 hours each day.
No Godot?
Godot joined GSoC in 2022, but hasn’t joined last year nor this year. Which is kind of sad, but there has not been an official statement as far as I can tell of why they don’t join anymore. It’s highly possible though that the core developers of Godot are just too busy to be taking the time to mentor people. If you want to help improve Godot you can always just go to the issues tab of the Godot repo and find things you could possibly work on. You may not get an official mentor but you will get help from the core developers in terms of correcting your PR and helping you to improve your PR before it is committed to the actual engine.
