u/IndividualLow3561

I'm hoping to hear from people who've done GSoC before.

One thing I'm still not clear on is: how do you actually get a mentor?

Let's say you've already selected an organization and started contributing through good first issues. What happens next? Do you just keep contributing until someone naturally starts mentoring you, or do you reach out to their communication channel and ask if sm1 is willing to mentor?

I'm also curious about what mentors generally expect from prospective GSoC students. How much time do they usually invest before the application period, and what level of independence is expected from the student?

I'd really appreciate hearing how this worked in your experience.

Salam everyone. I'm a 3rd semester CS student and I really want to start earning to cover my university expenses (at the least) by myself. I'm currently learning web development and am skilled in html,css, js and react.

Any advice?

I am a 3rd semester CS student. In the semester break of my 2nd semester, I learnt about open source and was really curious about seeing how software is designed and managed in the real world. I had heard about programs like GSoC from peers and seniors and really wanted to give it a try.

At this point I didn't have a huge skill set (still don't actually). I had just learnt core Java, hadn't built something of my own that I could proudly say it's mine and it's built by my own hand/ mind (without AI help). I knew the basics of C++ and Python and also Html, CSS and JS(I was actively learning this at that time).

So I jumped into a java project which I found was lightweight and it built on my (potatoish) machine. Went through the entire hassle of building it and setting it up. Heavily relied on AI to help me through it. I had also just learnt git and wasn't very comfortable using it like I only knew basic commands like , clone, pull, push, commit etc. learnt how to create branches and evth while trying to contribute to this project.

The project happened to be a 20+ years old java web server (older than I had been born for apparently 💀). But by a stroke of luck I found an issue in the documentation, opened my first PR and it got merged. Now I had no idea what web servers are and why are they needed or how they work internally. Just had a high level understanding of these.

I decided to try my luck and send an email to their developer mailing list not really expecting a reply. But to my surprise a maintainer replied and offered to mentor for GSoC. This was a plot twist I hadn't expected. I explored the ideas he had suggested for GSoC and realized they all seemed pretty advanced.

One of them involved reviving a side project related to the main project. I decided to look into it. I didn't know how build tools worked at this point either. I tried to build the project (with my very new jdk 25 because I had no idea about version compatibility)

Ofc it didn't work. It was a Maven build. I tweaked the configs around in the pom file and got a few modules to build. I ended up reporting the failures on the dev list and he told me the java version (8) and maven command he was using.

Later I switched to java 8 but still got failures (archetype integration tests and RAT failures). I didn't know what integration tests/unit tests were either and how do you write one. So I ended up telling him I don't feel ready for a strong GSoC proposal but he encouraged me and thought I could do it. I still decided it was not worth the overhead this year. I hadn't even learnt DSA yet. I would be learning 1000 different things at the same time. I don't know if it was the right decision but I backed out. I had learnt a lot in the span of a few days though. I keep hearing GSoC is for beginners but it's actually for people who know enough to be able to deliver something or maybe I just chose the wrong project.

Now thinking back on the experience, I find it insane and I couldn't really stop thinking about it.. I decided to stay in touch and try learning maven side by side and actually get back to the project in summer and I said so on the list. But my semester started and I barely got any time. I had yet to submit a code PR to the project too so I constantly doubted myself and how I was probably viewed (or wasn't because I wasn't doing anything). In this entire arc, all I had done was fix a few typos, the RAT issues(which was to exclude two files), docs and stuff like that. A couple lines of change. They ended up reviving it themselves.

Actually, I had not really cared about the history of the project(the gsoc project idea) I only wanted to do it because it was an opportunity to learn by doing. It had been lying dormant for quite a while because people had moved to other solutions since it wasn't actively maintained.

Recently I learnt JUnit and decided to try writing a test. I did, and then submitted a PR. But then I overthought its need to the project. It was trivial and did not catch any edge cases to a bug. It just tested documented behavior which was unlikely to break without breaking a dozen other tests. So I later closed it myself with a comment. Maybe I should've left it open just to get feedback to learn from but I felt afraid of getting it wrong.

To summarize, I have no idea what I am doing. The project is mature and there are no good first issues. The community is also people who have been in open source for really long. I hadn't been able to get over the experience because the mentor I talked to for GSoC believed in my potential when I didnt really believe in myself. And that kind of thing isn't easy to get over especially if you're a student or very early in your career. I feel I was pretty disappointing. Because there was no concrete contribution in the end.

Seeing people get selected for GSoC too was weird because I had a good opportunity but I decided not to dive in because my foundations were very shaky.

So my question is:

For someone with a lot of curiosity but still learning the ropes, what's the right way to approach open source? Should I go back to this project, start fresh with something simpler, or just build my own stuff and focus on getting a good internship for now. Has anyone ever been through something similar?

Hi. I will be appearing in the FAST NU test this year. I am actually already a university student but trying for a transfer. Could someone please tell me any good resources to prepare from? Share any links or past paper you have too please. Also should i use the new syllabus math books or the old ones? I really want to crack it so someone whose already given it could you share some tips too? THANKS