Google Code-In 2012 - how was it?

Hi, Habrik!

It just so happened that this year I won the Google Code-In. This is a competition for schoolchildren from all over the world in which they compete in the development of open source software. I managed to get on the Grand Prize Winners list, so I think it's worth writing this report.

I have a lot of information, tips and everything interesting.

Introduction

The competition is attended by 10 open-source organizations, such as KDE, BRL-CAD or Fedora. Each organization has a task pool that is replenished from time to time. He is supplemented by his mentor of these organizations - project developers (example: KDE organization, KDE Marble project, Torsten Rahn mentor). How to work with these tasks? Each task is defined by several fields: status, description, work done and comments.
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Let's talk about statuses:

• Open - the task is open, it can be taken. By the way, you can take only one task at a time.
• Claim Requested - someone asked for permission, but the mentor has not yet had time to allow / refuse.
• Claimed - the task is taken, someone is already working on it. It can be you.
• Reopened is the same as Open, only indicates that someone has already abandoned it.
• Needs Review - the participant has already uploaded the work done, verification is required.
• Needs More Work - the mentor checked the work and it turned out that the participant did not do everything. Sent for revision.
• Closed - hurray!

These are the statuses that I met. Maybe there are others, such as Deadline, but alas.

Prizes

This is all well and good, organizations, tasks, etc. But what about the prizes? Everyone who completed> 1 job, send a certificate. Who made> 2 - T-shirt (+ certificate).

But with the grand prize winners, the situation is more interesting. Each of the 20 winners (10 organizations * 2 finalists = 20 bodies) receives a prize, a trip to the Main Galactic Office of Google Corporation (if someone does not know, this is in Mantin View, California) for 4 days. They promise something exciting.

This year the trip is scheduled for April 28 - so I have not had time to go there yet. But after the trip I will make a report.

Well, what about the tasks?

All tasks are divided according to the principle of “expected execution time”. There are tasks for 1 day, there are 2, 3, 4, 5 ... In practice, many tasks are greatly underestimated or overestimated, but all this is not important, because during the judicial review this is all taken into account.

Tasks were not the most difficult, but not trivial (what was there to lie, and such were). All tasks are divided into Code, Documentation, Research, Unit Testing, User Interface. For me, the documentation and tests are too boring, so I decided that my way is coding tasks. In any case, this is the choice of everyone what to do - I saw a kid who did 50 tasks for documentation, remaining my biggest competitor ...

For example, one of the tasks that I completed: porting the satellite plug-in . Request to it: review request . A couple of screenshots:





And here is another task : review request . And the screenshot:

Social component

Mentor and administrators are very friendly. Never had any problems with them - they always gave access, they closed it too quickly. All communication in KDE was concentrated in IRC (irc.kde.org # kde-soc, etc.). The rest of the participants are quite loyal, friendly. Everyone has a good sense of humor - at least for me.

Some mentors dance salsa, travel, collect rare stones, but they are all very cool!

Google Code-In 2012

And now I will show you how my life was during the contest. Who does not want to read further, you can skip to the conclusion. And for those who still want to plunge into this whole event - Geronimo!

November 26, 2012 - the competition has begun. Now I know nothing about him.

After 2 days, tass tells me about him during a completely remote conversation from this topic. I am registering.

Now I, having done only two tasks, sincerely hope for a T-shirt. Having completed the third assignment, I decided to see a list of completed assignments in KDE (the organization I participated in). Then I realized that people like me are four or five, and that I have every chance.

Gathered decided to try. For the next 7 weeks, I solved 63 tasks , all the while feverishly glancing at the table of tasks - both unresolved and solved. I began to live in Irk, go to bed at 2 am, draw on history and literature.
On the calendar January 14, 2013. General deadline participants (you can not take the job). I take the last, 10 minutes before the deadline. For a couple of hours I decide, I pass. Hooray! It's over, waiting for the results.

After two weeks of waiting, on the 28th I receive a letter in the mail:

Hi Ilya,

Congratulations! You have been selected for the 20 Grand Prize Winners Contest for your work with KDE.

You can’t get to the IRC channel, discussion lists, etc. You can’t make it clear that you’ve been posting on the 4th post at 5:00 UTC. Thanks.
...

Hooray! I really did it. Victory, she, she, in my hands. We play spies until February 4th - on this day I turned 14 years old.

Conclusion

I hope that this post will serve as a good help to students who want to participate in this wonderful competition.

By the way, there is also a competition for students - Google Summer of Code (link below). Everything is much more complicated there and there is a scholarship.

Thank you for your attention, and as I like to say, happy coding! :)

Should help

Google Code-In 2012 Home
Ch. Google Summer of Code 2012 page
Winners Announcement
Statistics on participants

UPD: 5 minutes ago, the postman brought a parcel!