Template:Student application template public

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Public application template

This part is answered in public on your user page. Please copy its source (edit tab) and then fill. Delete any examples and annotations (this markup) afterwards. Same for questions that do not apply to your situation.

A: An introduction

My name is Erivelton Gualter and I am a first year PhD student at Cleveland State University, USA. My overall background is related to robotics applied to biomechanics. I am currently developing a robotics transfemoral prosthesis and I built a robotic wheelchair when I majored in Automation and Control Engineering at FEI University in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I am fluent in Portuguese, English and Intermediate Spanish.

It is my first time applying to the Google Summer of Code. However, I have been in touch with a couple organization: Octave and Sympy. My primary goal to participate in the gsoc is to build a long term relationship with the open source community. I want to take it serious and get involved. I have been using a lot of open source tools, and now I fell it is time to contribute for it.

I choose Octave because I have used MATLAB during my entire undergraduate program and I still use it for my PhD. However, now It is time to switch gears, so I decided to use Octave due the similarity to m scripting. Unfortunately, Octave still lacking some crucial functions which prevent some group of people to also switch gears. Therefore, I want to be part of maintainers group and I want to be able to use Octave for all my projects.

C: Contact

However, I was using dev101 in the IRC chat, which I will not longer use anymore.

E: Coding experience

Short answer of Programming Languages (in approximate order of proficiency):

  • M-file scripting;
  • C/C++;
  • Python;
  • HTML, CSS, Javascript, Pelican (Web development);
  • Java.

Some illustration about what I have done:

F: Feeling fine

  • “IRC and mailing list”: I have been hanging out in the IRC and following the mailing list without any problems;
  • “Mercurial”: I have been using git a quite time and I used hg just in order to clone and update the Octave project. I might ask about hg later on or I am sure I can find the majority answers in hg documentation.
  • “mediawiki”: I fell fine editing the wiki.
  • “development tools”: Basic understand to build a GNU system, using configure-make-make install. Although I have built several programs when I was a windowns user in Microsoft Visual Studio.

After the GsoC, I feel confident in stay in the community. For sure, I will be using Octave in my phd research at least for more three years, since I just started. However, my main goal is to became a maintainer of the Octave as hobby independent of my research and job.

O: Only out of interest

I first heard about Octave in third year of my undergraduate program. I had a problem with my Matlab license and I needed to conclude a homework. Therefore, I found Octave by myself surfing on Google. Actually, in that time I did not feel the Octave appearance really welcoming (just noting I was a window's user in that time). Then in the last year of college I did a dual boot Windows and Ubuntu 14.04, and I installed Octave in the Ubuntu side. However, I have been using both Octave and Matlab since I share code with my adviser, I still use Matlab a lot. (I am still trying to convince him to switch with me).

In back the time I used Octave for the first time in window's, I faced some installation issues with took a while to figure out. I am not using windows anymore, so I assume it is fine nowadays.

P: Prerequisites

  • I have a personal laptop with Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 10 (but I only use windows for specific software of my research). Also, I have full access for both system.
  • I basically spend my whole day in my laptop (24h).

S: Self-assessment

I belief that construct critics is essential for anyone looking to improve their abilities in certain tasks.

I am autonomous in my tasks and I consider myself very pro-activity individual. I prefer to discuss the goals desire prior to coding. After established the goals, even if we do not discussed what is the right path is to reach the goal I will be proactive and find a solution to reach this goal. Obviously with a feedback and construct criticism, the work will be concluded much faster.

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. Please also wiki-link the page for your elaborated proposal here.
  • Please provide a rough estimated timeline for your work on the task. This should include the GSoC midterms and personal commitments like exams or vacation ("non-coding time"). If possible, include two or three milestones you expect.
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