Editing User:Lk

= Public application template =
== A: An introduction ==
* Please describe yourself in three sentences, one of them regarding your current studies.<br />I am studying at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in the process of obtaining a major in computer engineering and minors in physics and statistics (expected graduation: May 2022). I attended the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy for high school, taking most computer science and physics courses offered. In my free time, I like to draw, cook, work out, and read.
** Which languages do you speak?<br />I speak English and Bulgarian natively and German at an advanced level.
** What's your overall background? <br />Although I have not yet had the chance to take highly specialized courses at my university, I have recently found a passion for data science and machine learning while participating in a few hackathons this year. I plan to pursue them in the coming years as part of my computer engineering degree.
*Why do you want to participate in the Google Summer of Code? What do you hope to gain by doing so?<br />I worked on an open-source project for the first time at Hack Illinois this year. I was very taken with the idea of being able to do something truly useful, however small, as the majority of programming I had done for classes and extracurriculars in the past felt quite trivial. Google Summer of Code seems like an excellent opportunity to pursue an open-source project with greater depth and guidance. In the past, I have worked under mentors doing research. I believe that the structure and mentorship that I will experience in GSoC will be incredibly constructive to my learning process, as well as fantastic at expediting my pace in completing work.
**Please also describe your previous experience with the GSoC, if any. <br />This is my first time applying to GSoC due to the minimum age.
* Why are you choosing Octave?<br />I began using Octave when I took the Coursera Machine Learning course offered by Andrew Ng from Stanford. I really enjoy the speed at which I can work in this highly intuitive language, and I would love to help make it better for others to use!

== C: Contact ==
* Please state the (unique and identical where possible) nick you use on IRC and any other communication channel related to Octave.<br />I have not used IRC with Octave.
* Which time zone do you live in? Will that change over GSoC duration?<br />I will live in the Central Daylight Timezone (UTC-5) over the duration of GSoC.
* Please state the timeframe (in UTC+0) when you feel most comfortable working during GSoC. Where are your time buffers? <br />I prefer to work mainly from 12.00 to 24.00, but I can work outside this range on occasion as needed.

== 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.<br />I have experience with C/C++ from computer science and engineering courses in university. I have experience with Octave from the Coursera Machine Learning Course and experience with Matlab from my electronics courses in university.
* Please describe your experience with other programming languages.<br />I have experience with C, C++, Java, LC-3, MATLAB, Python, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Javascript, JQuery, PHP, and SQL from various courses in high school and university.
* Please describe your experience with being in a development team. <br />I am currently interning at Synchrony Financial, on a team of three students and one mentor. My only experience with open-source so far has been at the 2020 Hack Illinois hackathon working on the gRPC project.
* Please describe the biggest project you have written code for and what you learned by doing so. Also, describe your role in that project over time.<br />During high school, I was on my FRC robotics team's programming team. I learned a lot about Java and controlling physical parts using code. Initially, I had no experience with programming beyond JavaScript, but eventually, I was able to code and debug for any part of the robot.
* Please state the commits and patches you already contributed to Octave. <br />I have not contributed any commits or patches to Octave because I am not sure where to start.

== F: Feeling fine ==
* Please describe (in short) your experience with the following tools: 
** IRC and mailing lists <br />I have no experience with IRC. I have set up mailing lists using PHP in a web technologies course.
** Mercurial or other source code management systems<br />I have no experience with Mercurial. I have extensive experience with Git.
** Mediawiki or other wiki software<br />I have no experience with Mediawiki. I have used other wiki software in a few courses to create and share content with classmates and instructors. I expect to be able to pick up wiki formatting quickly because I have a lot of experience with markup languages in creating websites and using LaTeX.
** make, gcc, gdb or other development tools<br />I have used make, gcc, and gdb somewhat extensively in class. I have experience in creating and modifying makefiles.
* What will make you actively stay in our community after this GSoC is over? <br />To me, the most offputting part of open-source projects is the seemingly high entry barrier. As long as I understand what needs to be done and where I can find the resources to do it (which I should know following GSoC), I plan on staying active in the Octave community.

== O: Only out of interest ==
* Did you ever hear about Octave before? 
** If so, when and where? How far have you been involved already?<br />I have used Octave in completing the Coursera Machine Learning course.
* What was the first question concerning Octave you could not find an answer to rather quickly? <br />I have not had any major issues with Octave due to the extensive documentation offered by the Coursera structure.

== P: Prerequisites ==
* Please state the operating system you work with.<br />I work with Windows 10 and Linux CentOS 7.7.
* Please estimate an average time per day you will be able to access
** an internet connection<br />24 hours
** a computer<br />24 hours
** a computer with your progressing work on<br />24 hours
* Please describe the degree to which you can install new software on computers you have access to.<br />I can install any new software on my Windows computer. I cannot install new software on my Linux computer, but it does have most industry-standard programs (e.g. Matlab) and packages (e.g. matplotlib).

== S: Self-assessment ==
* Please describe how useful criticism looks from your point of view as committing student.<br />I am into self-improvement in all areas, which leads me to seek out criticism and be pretty blunt. If I am taking the wrong steps, I won't be offended if I am told so because it benefits no one to keep this information private. If I am not following an expectation, I would like to be told so because I would not purposely be doing the wrong thing. Any and all criticism is useful.
* How autonomous are you when developing:<br />I prefer to code a proof of concept with the potential to modify it because the main way that I learn is hands-on. I am okay with taking the risk of having work thrown away if it doesn't work with the project because I will still have learned something from the process of creating the program.

== Y: Your task ==
* Did you select a task from our list of proposals and ideas?
** If yes, what task did you choose? Please describe what part of it you especially want to focus on if you can already provide this information. <br />Yes, I selected the [https://wiki.octave.org/Summer_of_Code_-_Getting_Started#JSON_encoding.2Fdecoding JSON encoding/decoding] project. I have used JSON files in data analysis and visualization projects in the past, and I think that Octave needs to have JSON integration to succeed as a widespread computational language. [[Proposal]] for reference.
* Please provide a rough estimated timeline for your work on the task. <br /> 
{| class="wikitable" style="margin-left:30px;"
|-
|May 4 - June 1
|Community Bonding
|-
|June 1
|Start Coding
|-
|Task 1
|Determine which implementation
|-
|June 29 - July 3
|Evaluations 1
|-
|Task 2
|Improve implementation
|-
|July 27 - 31
|Evaluations 2
|-
|Task 3
|Testing
|-
|August 6-8
|Unavailable (UIUC finals)
|-
|August 24
|End Coding
|-
|August 24 - 31
|Final Project and Evaluations 3
|-
|September 8
|Final Results
|}
[[Category: Summer of Code]]