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First published on 10th October 2023 in the newsletter
As has been the precedent in IITK’s history, a few students from our institute got selected for the prestigious Google Summer of Code 2023. Vox congratulates the selected students on their well-deserved success.
GSoC is a global program by Google for university students to learn about and get involved in open source. It is a unique program where students are paired with a mentor to introduce them to the open-source community and provide guidance while they work on a real-world open-source project during their summer break.
Projects cover many fields, including Cloud Computing, Operating Systems, Graphics, Medicine, Programming Languages, Robotics, Science, security, and many more.
Read the full interview as five selected candidates shed light on their journey, motivation, and difficulties.The interviewees are Pratyush Ranjan(Y19), Mihir Mittal(Y21), Shrish Shete(Y21),Pranjal Bhardwaj(Y21) and Siddharth Pathak(Y21).
Q. How did you come to know about GSOC? When did you start the journey?
Pratyush, GSOC: I talked to a Y18 senior, Priydarshi Singh, who happened to be a PClub coordinator. I was also involved in an ACA project with a Y17 senior, which spiked my interest in terms of general development.
Shrish, GSOC: I learned about GSOC from YouTube and started preparation two months before we needed to submit the proposal.
Mihir, GSOC: I attended Pclub’s GSOC session, and from there, I got to know about it. Then, I started exploring the official website around January.
Q. What was your motivation behind pursuing it?
Pranjal, GSOC: I had that dream of clearing GSOC at the back of my mind from the very beginning. Also, everyone was doing something or other in college, which motivated me to do something.
Shirish, GSOC: I was exposed to the R language, and one of our professors was a GSOC mentor. She motivated us to give GSOC a try.
Siddharth, GSOC: I wanted to utilize my first summer and get some work experience. If I hadn’t gone through GSOC, I would’ve tried to get this experience some other way.
Q. How did you prepare for it?
Pratyush: One should start passively preparing for it in January, shortlist organizations, and contact the mentors via Slack or email before the organizations get declared.
Siddharth: I have done courses in the R language. So, I specifically focused on R and R-based communities.
Mihir: I shortlisted the organizations in February. I’ll suggest getting help from relevant seniors. They can guide you very well.
Q. How did the Institute help you achieve this success?
Siddharth, GSOC: As I am from the SDS department, I was taught basic Python and R in my courses, which helped me a lot. This led me to choose a project in the R language.
Pranjal, GSOC: Shivam (senior, IITK) solved my doubts and even reviewed my proposal. He also suggested that I switch when there was no progress at a particular organization.
Q. What did you do in moments of frustration or when there was no progress?
Mihir, GSOC: Many times, we write code without understanding it because there are many open sources. The more important thing is to understand the code rather than copying it.
Pratyush, GSOC: Sometimes, I was just resolving bugs for 30 days. It was frustrating. I remember that during that time, I read a lot. I had some 100 tabs open in my browser, and often, solutions to most of the complex bugs turned out to be just going back to fundamentals
Shrish, GSOC: I would say, Just keep on learning. There are moments when it seems no progress is being made, but if you grind through it, you will see results.
Q. What was your reaction when the news broke? How did you celebrate?
Shrish, GSOC: I was travelling back home when the result was declared. I could not sleep and bought some chocolates once I got down to the station. I did not get any sleep that night!
Pranjal, GSOC: I had already accepted the fact that I couldn’t go through this time, so the selection was a surprise. I called my grandmother and a few relatives to share the news.
Siddharth, GSOC: My mentor informed me two days prior that the proposal was accepted. So I was not very surprised, but the celebrations are still due.
Q. Any comments on the Indian coding culture?
Shrish, GSOC: I feel like open source is not well explored in India. More people should work on it, as it has lots of opportunities.
Pranjal, GSOC: I have heard that people start very late in India, but it is also true that there have been many GSOC contributors and even many ICPC achievers from India.
Pratyush, GSOC: I feel like the software development jobs field is oversaturated. The companies tend to take DSA tests first for all kinds of roles, which I believe is not required and shouldn’t be the only parameter.
Q. How was your mentor-mentee relationship?
Mihir, GSOC: My mentor was highly responsive. He would even respond today if I had any doubts.
Siddharth, GSOC: My mentor, Prof. Dootika, was very helpful. She always answered promptly and didn’t ever put any hard deadlines on me.
Shrish, GSOC: It was nice. At first, they were very formal, but pretty soon they opened up and even talked about their universities.
Quick Questions
Q. Do any of your family members, especially your parents, know how prestigious GSOC is?
All interviewees: All they knew was that I was doing some project or internship for Google, which pays well, and they were happy when they got the news.
Q. How sure were you that you’d get into GSOC?
Pratyush, GSOC: For the first time, I was not that confident, as many people worked a lot but still weren’t able to go through.
Siddharth, GSOC: I saw the proposals for my competition, and they were very abstract. So, I developed some confidence in my selection.
Pranjal, GSOC: Some people had already coded the project at the time we were only submitting proposals. So, that was a little demotivating.
Q. What do you think is more difficult to crack? GSOC or JEE Advanced?
all interviewees: Definitely JEE Advanced
Q. What was your ESC grade?
Shrish & Pranjal: A
Pratyush & Siddharth: B
Mihir: A*
Written by: Abhijit Jowhari, Gupil Chhabra, Nandini Vaid
Edited by: Kunaal Gautam
Designed by: Mrunmay Suraywanshi
