Troyane

A: An introduction

My name is Nazar Gerasymchuk. I’m a student of 6th year of studying (now I'm getting Master degree). I'm specialized on "Programming Theory and Technologies" at Cybernetics Department of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. I speak English, Ukrainian and Russian.

I have a burning desire to take a part in GSoC-2013 as a student this year. I see the possibility to make my personal contribution into open source in general and into Octave in particular with GSoC 2013-team. I hope to improve next skills: programming, teamwork, applying of version control systems and so on. I have no previous experience with GSoC.

As I'm a big GNU/Linux fan, I used Octave and Scilab for some study purposes and I love them.

I use Qt as main development framework for a 3 years. Before, I programmed on pure C and C++. Have experience using of STL and little bit of boost. For some studying purposes, used Matlab, Scilab, Octave, so I have basic knowledge and skills. For some small projects I used OpenGL.

I'm interested in bash, Python, Free Pascal. I adore LaTeX and use it for printing purposes for a long time.

Really, I have no such development experience, but I want get it. I have experience in translating opensource programs and took part in few small projects with 2 developers in team (using svn, git) as developer.

The biggest project: QRegistrator -- is still under development, project for university. I'm only one developer. This is desktop application, thin client for handling in(out)come documents in MySQL database, printing that documents, finding by criteria, preparing reports. I learned a bit about application architecture, and about product specifications.

I know what is IRC and mailing lists. So, I need no guidance.
Really, I haven't use Mercurial, but I used SVN and GIT.
I'm familiar with Wiki.
For my C++/Qt projects at GNU/Linux and MS Windows I use such tools: GCC (MinGW), clang; cppcheck for static analisys; valgrind for profiling.

I think, that most interesting part is communication with people. So, if I'll speak with interesting people, we can keep our connection and developing of Octave even after GSoC.

We had open source addicts crew at university (Sun's Opensource university meetup) and made meetings related to educational software. Octave was one of our point of interest. Actually we found it at Ubuntu proposed apps and I am glad we found it.

First question concerning Octave we could not find an answer: there is no nice documentation or books in Ukrainian. There are some in Russian, and mostly in English.

I'll work on next operating systems: mostly GNU/Linux Debian, sometimes MS Windows 7, and if needed -- Windows XP.

Average time per day I will be able to access
- an internet connection: 4
- a computer: 4
- a computer with your progressing work on: 4-8

The degree up to which I can install new software on computers I have access to: I'm a Superuser :)

Please describe how useful criticism looks from your point of view as committing student.
How autonomous are you when developing? If you answer both subquestions with "Yes, definitely", we are a tad confused. ;-)
- 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?

I selected a task from your list of proposals and ideas.
- I want to work on Octave GUI [1]. So, it would be nice to Finish the Octave GUI or Implement a Qt widget for manipulating plots or Create a better (G)UI for the profiler. Hope, you'll recommend me something.

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"). Optionally include two or three milestones you expect.