GSoC [01]: Bonding period ends & Coding begins!

A month-long community bonding period ended on 27 May, commencing the official coding period. In this post, I would like to share my GSoC 2019 community bonding experience with CCExtractor Development, work-progress and the road ahead.

The official list of selected proposals was released by Google on the 6th of May and with it started the community bonding period. It began with me jumping for joy after getting the news of my proposal getting selected.

It was basically a month full of learning and planning. Two social groups have been created, one on Facebook and the other on Telegram, which includes over 600 selected students from around the globe. It is a great platform for sharing your progress and getting help when you are stuck somewhere.

Here are the tasks I checked off during the community period!

• Deciding the structure of my project
  This is the first time I am going to be working on a project which involves so much! Deciding the structure of the project early was a crucial task so that the development stays smooth ahead. I was sure to use C++ as the language and thus I started off with strengthening the concepts of the language. After checking out some popular C++ projects and reading some blogs on the same I have decided to use something like this:
  
  

• Creating a Trello board
  As I had mentioned in my proposal I wanted to have a detailed checklist of the tasks to be done with their deadlines. This would help me and my mentor to keep track of my work. I am maintaining the milestones and deliverables in a Trello board, which can be found here :
  Milestones and checklist for co-oCCur: High-speed subtitle synchronization tool
  
  

• Setting-up my Blog
  For everyone to follow my progress on the project I have set up this blog. This is the best way for the whole community to know what’s cooking. It’s a simple and mediumish themed Jekyll blog hosted on Github pages.
  
  Here it resides: https://sypai.github.io

• Setting-up Payoneer account
  There have been more discussions on this in the Telegram group than anything else. Fortunately, it took me around ten minutes to set it up and receive the confirmation email from Payoneer.  
  
  

Surprise 🎁 📙

As mentioned in the CCExtractor’s website,

This year we're going to try something new. All accepted students will get a programming book immediately after being accepted, with the hope that they read them before the coding starts. We want to see if this increases the quality of the work.

Each of the accepted students was to choose a technical book of their choice. I chose Elements of Programming Interviews in Python by Adnan Aziz, Tsung-Hsien Lee and Amit Prakash. Placement season being next in the queue, this book is a very good addition to my library.
Thank you CCExtractor Development! 😍

Bad News 😓

My end semester exams have been postponed, this was known, I had mentioned this in my proposal. But the final schedule wasn’t announced until 20th May. Guess what! Exams started from the very same day the coding period officially began. 
I had to re-schedule the weekly milestones and deadlines. I have informed my mentor regarding this and he says,

as long as you are on track by the time of the first evaluation you're OK. But it would be a good idea to show me your progress often.

It would be a bit of a predicament to manage to work with the exams. I hope by the end of first evaluation, I will able to complete all the deliverables.

Road Ahead! 🛣

At the end of the first four weeks, first evaluation [24 May - 28 May] begins. I will try to stick to the deadlines as I have mentioned in the trello board. I know it is going to be a roller-coaster ride. I am sure I will learn a lot during the next 3 months!

I wish all the participants a fun and a productive summer. Happy Coding!