[mlpack] Google Summer of Code

[Ryan Curtin]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 11:06:40AM +0100, Lars Hulstaert wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> my name is Lars, and I’m 1st master student from Ghent University,
> Belgium (computer science engineering).
> As I’m highly interested in machine learning and contributing to open
> source projects, I stumbled upon the ‘mlpack’ project on the Google
> Summer of Code website. I am wondering if (and how) it possible to
> contribute to mlpack through the GSC program. Does this require
> previous experience developing for mlpack. Is there an application
> procedure I have to complete to apply for this project, or do I try to
> find a mentor, and follow the procedure on the GSC website? As I have
> no previous experience in contributing in open source projects, I was
> wondering how to continue next.

Hi Lars!

Good to meet you!

We haven't yet applied to GSoC 2016 (the application period isn't open),
but I'm very hopeful that we'll be accepted as a mentoring organization
this year, like in 2013 and 2014.

Generally those students who have been selected have contributed to
mlpack in some way over the months leading up to the application, but I
don't want to give the idea that contributing now will 100% lead to
acceptance; after all, we aren't even part of the program yet. :)  But,
if you think you are interested and could enjoy working on mlpack, we're
happy to help out.

One good place to start out might be to look at the mlpack tutorials and
go through them to get familiar with the basic structure of the library:

http://www.mlpack.org/tutorials.html

Then after that you might consider taking a look at some of the bugs
marked "easy" or "moderate" difficulty in Github, if you want to get
your feet wet writing code:

https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/labels/D%3A%20easy
https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/labels/D%3A%20moderate

If you're looking for real-time discussion, you might find it in IRC, in
the #mlpack channel on freenode; see http://mlpack.org/involved.html for
more information... actually, that page has a lot of other good links
for getting involved too.

Anyway, if I can clarify anything, please let me know!

Thanks,

Ryan

-- 
Ryan Curtin    | "You can think about it... but don't do it."
ryan at ratml.org |   - Sheriff Justice