User:Arpit17792

A: An introduction

• Please describe yourself in three sentences, one of them regarding your current studies.

My name is Arpit Sharma I am a 3rd year Computer Science and Engineering student from IIIT Hyderabad, India. My interests are web development, programming and data structure and solving brain teaser problems.

• Which languages do you speak?

I speak Hindi and English.

• What's your overall background?

I am a student of Computer Science and Engineering with a good knowledge of Mathematics.

• Why do you want to participate in the Google Summer of Code? What do you hope to gain by doing so?

By participating in GSoC I want to make my first open source contribution and I will get to interact and learn with real cool people from across the world.

• Please also describe your previous experience with the GSoC, if any.

This is the first time I'm applying to GSoC. But here there were huge number of selections last year so there is a good circle of developers and programmers.

• Why are you choosing Octave?

I have been using octave from quite sometime it is more than just coding and it would be helpful for my B.Tech. research project.

C: Contact

• Please state the nick you use on IRC and any other communication channel related to Octave.

arpit17792

• Which time zone do you live in? Will that change over GSoC duration?

My time zone is GMT +5:30 and will remain the same over GSoC duration.

• Please state the timeframe (in UTC+0) when you feel most comfortable working during GSoC. Where are your time buffers?

I feel most comfortable working from UTC 1:00PM to UTC 8:00PM.

E: Coding experience

This part is one of the more important ones in your application. You are allowed to be as verbose as you want, as long as you stay on topic ;-)

• Please describe your experience with C++, Octave or Matlab m-scripts, OpenGL and Qt.

I am familiar and worked on c++, Matlab m-scripts and OpenGL. I have worked on C++ for nearly 2.5 years, made a 3D game based on OpenGL and wrote good amount of Matlab m-scripts on signal processing also.

• Please describe your experience with other programming languages.

Along with C++ I have also worked on C, Python, Java, PHP and a little bit RoR.

• Please describe your experience with being in a development team. Do you have experience working with open source or free projects?

I have worked on many projects in team and there is a huge advantage of being in a development team, I gained knowledge from other person that how problem could be solved more efficiently, bug solving takes much less time, meeting new people and most important less work load on an individual.

• Please describe the biggest project you have written code for.

Biggest project for which I have written code is "Search Engine for Wikipedia". In which first xml was parsed using libxml and many particular sized files were created which were then merged using k-way merge and a secondary index was created of that merged file, then secondary index was used for searching in different tags(title,references,dialog box etc) and top 10 results were displayed according to a ranking algorithm. And I also did a project on Image processing(http://web.iiit.ac.in/~arpit.sharma/project.pdf).

• What you learned by doing so. Also describe your role in that project over time.

Since I wrote whole code in C++ so it improved my coding and I learned many C++ libraries and tools. Initially I didn't cared about size of data due to which later on for 43GB data I had to store posting list in many files of limited size. After which I have learned to first analyse problem and its aspects properly before starting implementation. But at last it went right and completed successfully.

• Please state the commits and patches you already contributed to Octave.

Till now I have committed patch #8373 with new mapping-package functions implementation and bug(#41776) report and its patch with correction in unitsratio function and its tests. These things have helped me a lot in understanding the codes now I am more comfortable and working on other functions related to project.

F: Feeling fine

• Please describe (in short) your experience with the following tools:
• IRC and mailing lists

In starting I had some problems but I am completely comfortable with both IRC and mailing lists.

• Mercurial or other source code management systems

I am completely fine with Mercurial after committing patches.

• Mediawiki or other wiki software

I am comfortable with Mediawiki.

• make, gcc, gdb or other development tools

Most of these tools I have used and using in my course projects so yes I am comfortable with make, gcc, gdb or other development tools but had some problems initially due to dependencies.

• What will make you actively stay in our community after this GSoC is over?

After quite some time contributing to the community I have started enjoying and actively participating in discussion on topics on IRC and mailing list.This active contribution and enthusiasm among community members surely will make me to stay in our community after this GSoC also.

O: Only out of interest

• Did you ever hear about Octave before? If so, when and where? How far have you been involved already?

Yes.I have used it previously for image and sound signal processing and mathematical purpose during my academic course "Digital Signal Analysis and Applications".I have mentioned a project on it in coding experience section.

• What was the first question concerning Octave you could not find an answer to rather quickly?

At first I had problems in building due to many dependencies but solved it by asking on IRC chat. I can work on writing a script to solve dependencies.

P: Prerequisites

• Please state the operating system you work with.

I work with Ubuntu 13.10.

• Please estimate an average time per day you will be able to access
• an internet connection

24 Hours.

• a computer

24 Hours.

• a computer with your progressing work on

24 Hours.

• Please describe the degree up to which you can install new software on computers you have access to.

I have my personal Laptop with 24 hour access. I can install any required software any time.

S: Self-assessment

• Please describe how useful criticism looks from your point of view as committing student.

I think criticism forces you to think about how you work it is like form of communication I never take it personally.

• How autonomous are you when developing?

I am autonomous with the help of google search.

• Do you like to discuss changes intensively and not start coding until you know what you want to do?

Yes I would like to discuss anything before proceeding as it update others about about the progress and gives right direction.

• Do you like to code a proof of concept to 'see how it turns out', modifying that and taking the risk of having work thrown away if it doesn't match what the project or original proponent had in mind?

In the starting I like to code basics of that concept to get feel of it then start coding from scratch according to the project proposal.

Y: Your task

• Did you select a task from our list of proposals and ideas?

Yes I am interested to address Generalised eigenvalue problem.