User:AndrejLojdl

My GSoC application.

A: An introduction

• Please describe yourself in three sentences, one of them regarding your current studies.
  • Which languages do you speak?
  • What's your overall background?
• Why do you want to participate in the Google Summer of Code? What do you hope to gain by doing so?
  • Please also describe your previous experience with the GSoC, if any.
• Why are you choosing Octave?

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My name is Andrej Lojdl. I love programming, mathematics, and electronics, as well as any combination of these. I’m a first year student working towards a Bachelor degree in Computer Science at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, Serbia. I speak Slovak (primary), Serbian and English.

Beside my regular course work consisting mostly of math this year, I’ve read most of the SICP book from MIT, I’ve been reading about Python, and I’ve been introduced to VCS with Git and unit testing by a friend from the industry. Before college I’ve been working on a few projects. My first project was “Signature segmentation and replication”, where I was scanning signatures and then segmenting them, using Matlab. Segmentation consisted of detecting nodes and arranging them in a sequence that matched the sequence of writing. My second project was “SPH Fluid Simulation”, where I was trying to replicate the behaviour of incompressible fluids. Code was transferred from C (and OpenGL), to C# (and XNA framework) and finally to Processing. There was some flaw in the mathematical model and I was trying to get around it. These two projects were part of my work in the Petnica Science Center. As a final project in high school I wrote Sudoku solver/generator.

By participating in Google Summer of Code program, I hope to learn something new, gain more real world experience and spend the summer flipping bits, not burgers. The philosophy of sharing aligns well with my own values. I hope to get a better idea how it is to work in software engineering and how open source communities work, and how can I as an individual participate in the community.

This is the first year I’m trying to participate in GSoC. I’m choosing the Octave project because I have been using it for some course work, and because it has helped me alot with some online learning courses, like machine learning on Coursera.

C: Contact

• Please state the (unique and identical where possible) nick you use on IRC and any other communication channel related to Octave.
• Which time zone do you live in? Will that change over GSoC duration?
• Please state the timeframe (in UTC+0) when you feel most comfortable working during GSoC. Where are your time buffers?

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Lojdl_ is my nickname on IRC. I live in UTC/GMT +1 timezone (current time zone offset is 2h). I’m most comfortable to work from 9AM to 5PM (+/- 1h), but I’m flexible.

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.
• Please describe your experience with other programming languages.
• Please describe your experience with being in a development team.
• 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.
• Please state the commits and patches you already contributed to Octave.

F: Feeling fine

• Please describe (in short) your experience with the following tools:
  • IRC and mailing lists
  • Mercurial or other source code management systems
  • Mediawiki or other wiki software
  • make, gcc, gdb or other development tools
• What will make you actively stay in our community after this GSoC is over?

O: Only out of interest

• Did you ever hear about Octave before?
  • If so, when and where? How far have you been involved already?
  • If not, where would you expect or advise us to do advertising?
• What was the first question concerning Octave you could not find an answer to rather quickly?

P: Prerequisites

• Please state the operating system you work with.
  • If you have access to more than one, please state them and the conditions under which you are granted this access.
• Please estimate an average time per day you will be able to (if separated) access
  • an internet connection
  • a computer
  • a computer with your progressing work on
• Please describe the degree up to which you can install new software on computers you have access to.

S: Self-assessment

• Please describe how useful criticism looks from your point of view as committing student.
• How autonomous are you when developing?
  • Do you like to discuss changes intensively and not start coding until you know what you want to do?
  • 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?

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.
  • If you apply for a task you have added yourself instead, please describe this task, its scope and people you already talked to concerning it. What field of tasks did you miss on the list?
• Please provide a rough estimated timeline for your work on the task.