When you do something best in life, you don’t really want to give that up.
- Roger Federer
image taken by Sahar’s Mom when we were working on the project together
As appropriately quoted by Federer, when you start with something really good, it becomes so close to your heart that you don’t want to let it go. So is our connection with the RGSoC program and the community. It’s been 4 months since we became a part of it and it seems this journey had just begun a while ago.
It all started with our selection to Rails Girls Summer of Code as a volunteer team to PyDSA project. Eventually, we have come to the stage where the learning process and bond with the community has become so strong that we wish to be connected to it forever. During this journey filled with so many experiences, some moments were so memorable and cherished that now it is really hard to go back and bid our goodbye.
Experience working in open source
This was our first proper experience with the Open Source community.
We had primarily taken up the RGSoC project to get exposure to Open Source, to foray into this never ending space filled with excitement, to get to know how to code into an actual live project repo and the feeling when your PR gets merged. We learnt a lot about community bonding, for instance it is not about what you learn but what you return to the community, how even a small change or input from your side may impact someone’s life deeply.
We got to interact with many people as part of conferences (PyCon India) and some very inspirational ladies (PyLadies Pune Chapter)
It is always a challenge to handle your academics along with your passion when you are a student but through the summer program we realised the importance of being a part of the community and what the world of open source can teach you which you might never learn under the bounds of an institute.
Snapshot of the video call attended by all coaches, mentor and supervisor taken by Mansi
What we achieved - Majorly Web App
In the second half of the program, we focussed upon the frontend part of the WebApp of PyDSA.
We explored D3.js, tried some things in it and finally made the visualisation of Bubble Sort Algorithm and Graph Data Structure using it.
Though the PyDSA App is still in development mode, stay tuned for it first official release :)
a gif to show the working of Bubble Sort Visualisation created using D3.js by Sahar Siddiqui
Key Learnings
Never be hesitant to ask your doubts. Clarify as soon as possible or else you would be losing your own time.
Consistency matters a lot!
You will find good guides everywhere! However, help comes to people who ask for it! :p
We understood the importance of community involvement as it helps us interact with some great people working in various fields.
Never be scared to try different and new things. You will always find yourself more satisfied after learning about something new everyday :D
Experience of PyCon India
One of the good things that happened in the duration of RGSoC project that luckily for us PyCon India took place in our hometown Delhi. Pycon India was the first major conference we attended. It not only served as a major inspiration to us but also opened the doors of new opportunities. With so many brilliant and enthusiastic people gathered to discuss about the topics which you are passionate about, it definitely boosts up your confidence to further delve into the field as much as possible.
Met Andreas Mueller and attended talks by awesome people.
Major Breakthrough - We will soon have our very own PyLadies Delhi chapter!
Go girls! :’)
image with Andreas Mueller who was present as a keynote speaker taken by a friend at PyCon India 2016
Thanks to PyDSA Team
On this journey, we met a lot of great people who inspired us at every step and motivated us to push our boundaries and target more.
Supervisor ( Vaishali Thakkar and Sophia Takeva ) - We got a great support from their side throughout. They were truly an inspiration to us. Vaishali not only guided us but also helped us whenever we required.
Mentors ( Amit Kumar and Sanyam Khurana ) - They are the first people we met during this journey with Open Source and we are thankful for the guidance they gave us and approaches they taught us throughout the journey.
Coaches ( Anuvrat, Saurabh, Ankit and Dr. Rahul ) - Anuvrat and Saurabh helped us to realise the importance of community bonding and encouraged us to always learn and try new things. Ankit and Dr. Rahul helped us a lot in understanding the data structures and different models that can be used to implement them in the generic way.
Also we like to thank the entire RGSoC community. They have done a great job in motivating us and keeping up the spirit all throughout.
image taken by Mansi Goel with PyDSA mentors - Amit and Sanyam
What’s next?
We will be working on the project further and will keep contributing to it.
We will be looking for an opportunity to work on an Open-Source project next summer as well through different programs like Outreachy and GSoC.
Mansi will be continuing her journey of Open-Source in GHC India in December 2016.
With the help of other Python Enthusiasts we met at PyCon India, we have started the PyLadies Delhi Chapter. :D We will work to make it reachable to the community and we are hoping for a meetup soon.
We have already formed a ‘Women in Tech Chapter’ in our institute (IIIT-D) along with the other RGSoC participants and Anita Borg Scholars from our institute.
Last Words - Signing Off!
Some experiences in life leave such a great impact that all you can remember are the positivities and learnings. They encourage you to carry the legacy forward, inspire others and motivate them like anything.
Our journey in RGSoC was one such experience for us so we can happily say that it is not the end here, it’s just the beginning. :D
We can’t believe it’s over! Saying that this was the greatest summer of our lives would be an understatement. When we first applied for RGSoC, we never thought we’d get this far. But we made it till the end, and we are very proud of ourselves and all the amazing teams who were a part of Rails Girls Summer of Code this year!
What we achieved over the summer
We still remember how we looked for each other and our coaches. All the frantic searching for coaches, selecting a project, understanding it, making our first contribution to it, writing the application, re-reading it a million times! It was one hell of a journey, and an amazing one at that.
Our initial madness! Finding each other and our project <3 (Credits: Screenshots taken by Team l1ghtsab3r)
We believe we achieved a great deal over the summer. Russell, our mentor sent us a list of issues we could tackle over our summer of code. We accomplished several tasks from that! We started off by completing quite a few operator implementations. These issues were the most basic ones, and gave us a good understanding of the vast codebase that VOC has. After this, we went on to implement methods on standard types. Both these topics were relatively easy and helped us to wade through the codebase and understand it better. After getting through with these issues, we wanted to do something more challenging. Hence began our journey on implementing a stubbed out datatype - Complex! This took us quite a while, diving deep into the bytecode of VOC. We learned a lot, not just about VOC, but about the internals of Python, and about bytecode too. After we were done with that (phew!), we also worked on supporting a linguistic structure in the VOC compiler. This meant working out how to parse language structures like for/else in Python bytecode, and then generating the equivalent Java opcodes.
Out on Srishti's birthday! (Credits: Our dear friend, Shivam Chatuvedi. Fun fact: He taught us Python 3 years back. We probably wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for him)
What we hope to do ahead
The summer may be over, but our journey with VOC isn’t over yet! Both of us find this project really interesting and it’s very close to our hearts <3 We want to keep contributing to this project, and want others in our community to do so as well. Currently, we are working on a few larger issues which would take some time and both of us are really enjoying getting our hands dirty with VOC.
A picture from the hacknight we organised in our college (Credits: Byld, The Software Development Club, IIIT-D)
We recently organised a “hacknight” in our college campus, for which the theme was “Contributing to opensource software”. Taneea and Vrinda from Team Twiches were also co-organisers. It was a fun session where we taught Git and introduced our opensource projects to the attendees. All of them were very excited to get started on the projects and we feel really happy to be bringing more people into opensource.
Our experience
L to R: Naman, Srishti, Sambhav and Soumya at PyCon, India (Credits: Soumya taking a selfie!)
I don’t think we can sum up our experience in a few words, but we’ll still give it a try. Rails Girls Summer of Code has been one hell of a roller coaster ride. We cannot believe how much we’ve learned over the past three months. We aren’t just better programmers now, but have grown as people as well! Interacting with all the diverse teams across the world was truly a life-changing experience, one we will always cherish.
Apart from learning, we’ve not just contributed to VOC, but have also received the Google Anita Borg Scholarship together, attended PyCon India and even submitted a patch to CPython! If three months back someone had told us that we’d be able to achieve all this (along with handling univ work), we would probably have laughed it off. We didn’t even know we were capable of all this! Last three months have been the best three months of our life, where we learned how to work with a team (remotely!!) and juggling a million tasks together.
People who made it possible
We couldn’t have made it till the end without all the amazing people involved in our journey. We wish that we can meet each one of you some day. RGSoC has been the way it is, all because of you.
Russell Keith-Magee
This wouldn’t have been possible without you. You have been truly supportive of us all along! We couldn’t have asked for anything more from a mentor. Both of us just wish that we could hop onto a plane to Australia to meet you! Every time we came to you with a question, you were always there, ready to help. No matter how silly the question was. You’ve guided us and supported us every step of the way, thank you for that :)
Natalie Volk
We loved talking to you on Tuesday nights :D and miss every bit of it now. You kept us motivated all along and gave us really awesome advice on how to proceed with issues and managing time.
Maria and the RGSoC orga
Maria, thank you for letting us know about all the awesome conferences <3 You were also our supervisor for a short period of time when Natalie went on her vacation. It was amazing to get to know you. Ana, thank you for that beautiful video, it literally brought tears to our eyes :’) RGSoC orga, thank you for having this summer of code for women. Both of us hope that we too can inspire other women some day the way you have.
Our amazing coaches - Chiang, Manish, Anuvrat, Naman and Sambhav
You were always there, literally! Whenever we were stuck and need help, one of you was there to help us out of the mess. All we had to do was ping you, and you stopped everything you were doing and made us your priority. Without you, we would probably STILL be stuck at our first task. Thank you for pushing us to do things and to achieve all we’ve achieved. Even when we were extremely bogged down, a simple reply from any of you, telling us what direction to proceed in, how to solve our problem was enough to get us adrenaline pumped and raring to go again.
Other wonderful teams!
Thanks to all the amazing teams out there who were also our support system. We learned so much from you all, more than we ever could have imagined :D
Our key learnings and advice to RGSoC ‘17 aspirants
Communication is the key. Never hesitate to ask questions to your mentor, coaches or supervisor. They are all there for you. Remember, no question is a silly question!
Once you’ve learned something, make sure you help another person out.
Diversify Tech! B) (Credits: Giphy)
You can do it, don’t ever think that it’s not the right time, because it IS. There will always be that little voice in your head which will tell you that you’re probably not ready for this. You know what, chuck that voice. ;) Go ahead and be awesome!
Just listen to the penguin (Credits: Giphy)
We love the party parrot <3
Party Parrot ROCKS!!! (Credits: Giphy)
Team Reactives with Sonic Pi Mentor - Joseph Wilk, supervisor - Ana, coaches - Arrchana, Vanchi & Stewart! (Image Credits: Our awesome supevisor: Ana)
It’s just the beginning
Our Participation in the Rails Girls Summer of Code 2016 started our contribution to the open source. Three months has passed, but the impact and community of this year program will last long into our future.
Our project has ended with a functional application that supplements the usage of the Sonic Pi software for visually impaired users. After the first test with the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped, we have gathered quite detailed feedback and will continue to re-iterate and improve our software for future tests. This is indeed the start of our new collaboration with a beneficiaries in this co-creation process.
What’s our plan?
Besides improving our project, we look forward to widening our technical skills and open source involvement during this year Hacktoberfest and completing our university study. For Tu An, she hopes to actively apply and hone skills after RGSoC in her internship in front-end web development. Shwetha will continue to explore hardware and software engineering fields in NUS before embarking on a year-long internship of the NUS Overseas College Program.
Our last words
We can’t express enough gratitude towards our amazing mentor, coaches and supervisor throughout this program. We learned technical skills, project management and inter-personal communication, made new friends and honed our character. The lessons about appreciation of one another, timely and transparent communication will remain our key takeaways regardless of our career in the future.
We really hope that RGSoC and other similar programs will multiply and widen their impact all over the world. Inspirational women and supportive men from these initiatives will continue to advocate for more inclusive and fair education and job opportunities in tech industries.
Team Twitches at BBQ Nation! (Image Credits: Taneea's Sister)
“As long as we don’t die, this is gonna be one hell of a story.”
We didn’t and it was. Rails Girls Summer of Code 2016 is an experience we’re going to carry in our hearts till we’re plagued by old-age memory loss.
To say we have come far from what we were as programmers and individuals would be an understatement. When we first applied for RGSoC, we never imagined the wealth of knowledge or experience or memories that we would accumulate during these three months. From late night calls with our supervisor, Ramon, to basically being bullied into reading docs by our coach, Kuldeep, to stalking people on GitHub, we tried it all. We learned to work together - not just plan together, but to program as a pair too. We learned that recognising that you don’t know something or don’t understand something is the most important step of learning.
This summer gave a new meaning to try-till-you-succeed for us. Because yes, there were a lot of obstacles. Sometimes we fought over trivial things or couldn’t solve a problem no matter how much we tried and were just frustrated at the end of the day and didn’t want to update our log. But then, there was that pesky little mail that we received the next day about updating our daily log, and we just had to go back and give it another try! With the help of our mentors and coaches, we kept trying to work things out and we’re positive that all this learning and the figure-it-out attitude is going to take us far in life.
Last Team Call of the Summer! (Image Credits: Team Twitches)
“I’ve learned that home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling.”
Coming to the most important part, we’d like to thank the following people (in no particular order of preference):
Ramon Huidobro: Thank you for being quirky, fun, chilled out, not-nagging, hating the organizational stuff, being supportive ALWAYS, and THANK YOU for being YOU. You were a supervisor (bad choice of word), mentor, coach, and friend ALL AT THE SAME TIME. This summer wouldn’t have been the same without your smiling face staring up at us every weekend of this past summer, and we definitely wouldn’t have made it through without your support.
Simon & Rory: You both have been the sweetest, kindest, and the MOST supportive project mentors anyone in this world has ever had. EVER. We appreciate all the guidance and the help that you both gave us throughout the summer, without fail. Simon, thank you for listening to our rants about Hound being annoying, and Rory, you know you’re picture perfect! We have loved every minute of contributing to OpenFarm and we hope to keep contributing for a very very long time.
Kashyap, Kuldeep, Sadiksha, Ankur and Akshay (our coaches): From late night Hangout calls to answering our queries while you were at work, you people have done it ALL. And that’s why you’re the best! Seriously, though we just couldn’t have done it without you responding to our SOS calls (“Please save me from Angular!”) and wouldn’t have been able to come this far without you explaining every tiny concept to us in detail. Thank You. So Much! Kashyap, you really do rock with Angular even if you think it’s rusty. Kuldeep, thank you for being there when nobody else was. (Literally, you were online at the oddest of hours!). Sadiksha, you were our first coach and you have been there for us every step of the way - from helping us with our applications to helping us find a place to stay in Berlin! Ankur, thanks for teaching us that the simplest solution is always the best solution - we know we can always rely on you and your advice! And finally, thank you Akshay, for teaching us to think about every aspect of the problem before finding a solution for it.
Team Twitches out for tacos! (Image Credits: Taco Bell Server)
Fellow RGSoC Teams: Thank you, ladies for being our involuntary support systems when we were feeling low. We have learned more from interacting with you than we could ever imagine. We love every song on our customized RGSoC playlist and we hope to keep adding onto that list. Do keep in touch, because we really will miss all of you!
Last but not the least, the RGSoC organisers: You were amazing. Ana, you make beautiful videos! We wish we could make them half as well as you do! Maria, thank you so much for sticking with us and telling us about all the possible conferences! Laura, getting those first few mails from you was life-altering and we hope you deliver as much joy to other teams in the future as you did to us. And thank you, Anika, for starting this wonderful initiative of getting more women into open source. We hope to continue what you’ve started in our own city!
“Shoot for the moon, even if you fail, you’ll land among the stars”
By working with such a diverse community - our own team consisted of people from three different continents and four different countries - we learned to appreciate the little things in life, like when that one hound comment that is haunting you finally gets resolved or that simple ‘well done’ from your mentor or simply being up all night, trying to work but mostly just laughing about random things with your friends. We learned to aim high while still being practical. These are not things anybody can teach you - these are realizations that come from within and strike you like lightening, but stay with you forever (sort of like Flash’s powers).
Never go at war with Angular. You won’t make it out alive.
“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.”
Disclaimer: A special thanks to John Green, Cecelia Ahern and Paolo Coelho for being amazing writers and providing us with quotes that we'll carry with us till the end of time.
Last week, teams around the world celebrated their very last day of RGSoC 2016. While we were all sad to see the Summer of Code end, we also know that for most of us this isn’t an end — it’s a new beginning! But before diving into the future, let’s take a look at what happened in the past three months…
Some stats about the summer
We foster an environment of learning during our program, which is why we don’t compare teams with each other. Every team is different, and because of the different types of projects all work on, their summer will lead to bigger or smaller code contributions. But since we do love statistics of all kind, we kept track of some numbers for everybody’s enjoyment. Here they are:
Look at all the things that happened! (Image: Laura Gaetano)
We’re changing lives thanks to you
This year has been an amazing one — and after receiving a Ruby Award from the community last May, we are realising just how many lives have changed through Rails Girls Summer of Code. This change would not be possible if it wasn’t for you. Thank you so much to all of you—to every single person who was involved in making this summer unforgettable for 20 participating teams. We are so grateful to all the sponsors who supported our students financially — a special thank you goes to our partners Travis CI and GitHub, our platinum sponsor Google Open Source and our gold sponsors: GitLab, Basecamp, Malwarebytes, Honeybadger, Compose and Mozilla. A giant thank you also to the individuals who donated what they could to support our program, to the coaching companies who hosted our teams this summer, the coaches and mentors who gave their time and expertise to help our participants daily, the supervisors who helped keep all the students focused on their goals, the conferences that donated tickets for our teams, and the trust committee for offering an ear to anyone who needed help. Last but not least, an enormous thank you to all the volunteers who make RGSoC happen every year. It’s a gigantic team effort, and we rely on so many amazing people for their design skills, development powers, organisational abilities, and communication know-how. So to Ana, Anika, Carsten, Emi, Ines, Katrin, Lieke, Linda, Lucas, Maria, Markus, Max, Natti, Ramon, Vaishali: Thank you for being there, and for making this program run as smoothly as it could have run. You’re the best! <3
The very last day of RGSoC in twitter moments
To finish it all off, we’ve collected all of the tweets about the celebrations around the world, thanks to Twitter Moments. Look at these many happy faces!
End-of-Summer celebration at SoundCloud (Image: Anika Lindtner)
What’s next?
After the summer is before the summer! In October, we will tie all loose ends and, believe it or not, start working on the 2017 edition of RGSoC. We’re getting most of the team together in Portugal, after RubyConfPT, to talk about our future plans: improving the program to make the experience for every one even better next year. If you happen to be around in Braga on October 27–28, come say hi! We’d love to chat.
We’ll also be looking for volunteers, organisers, and anyone who wants to lend a hand. If this is something that interests you, drop us a line.
a gif to show the working of Bubble Sort Visualisation created using D3.js by Sahar Siddiqui
Our initial madness! Finding each other and our project <3 (Credits: Screenshots taken by Team l1ghtsab3r)
Out on Srishti's birthday! (Credits: Our dear friend, Shivam Chatuvedi. Fun fact: He taught us Python 3 years back. We probably wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for him)
A picture from the hacknight we organised in our college (Credits: Byld, The Software Development Club, IIIT-D)
L to R: Naman, Srishti, Sambhav and Soumya at PyCon, India (Credits: Soumya taking a selfie!)
Diversify Tech! B) (Credits: Giphy)
Just listen to the penguin (Credits: Giphy)
Party Parrot ROCKS!!! (Credits: Giphy)
Team Reactives with Sonic Pi Mentor - Joseph Wilk, supervisor - Ana, coaches - Arrchana, Vanchi & Stewart! (Image Credits: Our awesome supevisor: Ana)
Team Twitches at BBQ Nation! (Image Credits: Taneea's Sister)
Last Team Call of the Summer! (Image Credits: Team Twitches)
Team Twitches out for tacos! (Image Credits: Taco Bell Server)
Team Twitches dancing! (Image Credits: Giphy.com)
