Hi readers,
This is going to be my first blog post and somewhat longer as well. It is an informal post not related to my GSOC project. In this post I will be focusing mainly on my journey of GSOC. Okay so lets get started- :)
How all of this started? -
All of this started about one and a half year ago during my stay in Kota for my preparation of various competitive exams(Yes, I am a dropper). When I was in Kota I had made it my habit to browse quora and google news daily for fifteen minutes so that I can stay updated with worldly affairs apart from PCM. It was like a normal night, the sky was clear, the stars were twinkling(don't worry not going to write a long story, just setting up the mood), I was browsing quora on my Micromax Q5(my phone earlier) then all of a sudden a question poped in my Quora feed. If I remember correctly, it was like - How should one prepare for "GSOC"? (I was unable to even pronounce the last word correctly!). I had no idea about GSOC. So I googled "GSOC"(from that day I have made it my habit to google any term that I come across, whose meaning I don't know. Never know what the luck has in its pocket for you!). It took me about five to six days to completely understand how the program works and what are its prerequsites. Since before this I had never heard of the term "opensource" so I started to google about it and to my mere surprise it turned out that the browser that I am using for all this is also an open source software. I was surprised to see how vast the open source world is. But since I was on my "mission" to crack some competitive exam so that I could land into a good college with a branch of my choice(CS/IT), I had to forget about all this and to concentrate on my studies. I put GSOC aside and continued my preparation but it was now on my target list. All of this happened even before I started my engineering. ;)
As we know that "Time and Tide waits for none", time passed away sooner then I expected and it was now exam time. After facing a mix of some success and failures and a lot of hardships, I was able to grab a seat in HBTI, Kanpur with a branch of my choice(I.T.)(There is a long story behind it as well that I hope to share some time later). Between all of this, there was a time period of about one and a half when I was completely free and since it was almost a year that I was from programming, the programming enthusiast inside me was desperate to start coding again. It was during this time period that I got to know about "Python". I got "attracted" towards it and started to learn it. Since I already had a good knowledge of C and Java, Python seemed to be a piece of cake and within just one month I got proficient in it. Knowing about my passion for programming, my parents gifted me a really nice laptop. Now to have some practice of my newly learned language and to have a view of the open source world I started to contribute to Mozilla(GSOC was still not in the picture). While contributing to Mozilla I got to learn about a plethora of new things like Linux, version control, unit testing etc. It was really a nice experience. The people there were really helpful.
About five months of hard work, by the end of December I was now very much comfortable with the terminology and the modus-operandi of the open source world. Earlier, I was having plan to apply for GSOC in my second year of engineering. But being confident enough about my skills I decided to apply for it in my first year. I thought that if I get selected then it will be a big achievement and a dream come true earlier than expected and even if I don't get selected I will be having the "necessary experience" so that I can crack it next year and it really turned out to be a really good decision.
That's it for now. I will be adding more posts sooner so stay connected for more. I hope that it wasn't boring.
Thanks,
Harshit Bansal.
This is going to be my first blog post and somewhat longer as well. It is an informal post not related to my GSOC project. In this post I will be focusing mainly on my journey of GSOC. Okay so lets get started- :)
How all of this started? -
All of this started about one and a half year ago during my stay in Kota for my preparation of various competitive exams(Yes, I am a dropper). When I was in Kota I had made it my habit to browse quora and google news daily for fifteen minutes so that I can stay updated with worldly affairs apart from PCM. It was like a normal night, the sky was clear, the stars were twinkling(don't worry not going to write a long story, just setting up the mood), I was browsing quora on my Micromax Q5(my phone earlier) then all of a sudden a question poped in my Quora feed. If I remember correctly, it was like - How should one prepare for "GSOC"? (I was unable to even pronounce the last word correctly!). I had no idea about GSOC. So I googled "GSOC"(from that day I have made it my habit to google any term that I come across, whose meaning I don't know. Never know what the luck has in its pocket for you!). It took me about five to six days to completely understand how the program works and what are its prerequsites. Since before this I had never heard of the term "opensource" so I started to google about it and to my mere surprise it turned out that the browser that I am using for all this is also an open source software. I was surprised to see how vast the open source world is. But since I was on my "mission" to crack some competitive exam so that I could land into a good college with a branch of my choice(CS/IT), I had to forget about all this and to concentrate on my studies. I put GSOC aside and continued my preparation but it was now on my target list. All of this happened even before I started my engineering. ;)
As we know that "Time and Tide waits for none", time passed away sooner then I expected and it was now exam time. After facing a mix of some success and failures and a lot of hardships, I was able to grab a seat in HBTI, Kanpur with a branch of my choice(I.T.)(There is a long story behind it as well that I hope to share some time later). Between all of this, there was a time period of about one and a half when I was completely free and since it was almost a year that I was from programming, the programming enthusiast inside me was desperate to start coding again. It was during this time period that I got to know about "Python". I got "attracted" towards it and started to learn it. Since I already had a good knowledge of C and Java, Python seemed to be a piece of cake and within just one month I got proficient in it. Knowing about my passion for programming, my parents gifted me a really nice laptop. Now to have some practice of my newly learned language and to have a view of the open source world I started to contribute to Mozilla(GSOC was still not in the picture). While contributing to Mozilla I got to learn about a plethora of new things like Linux, version control, unit testing etc. It was really a nice experience. The people there were really helpful.
About five months of hard work, by the end of December I was now very much comfortable with the terminology and the modus-operandi of the open source world. Earlier, I was having plan to apply for GSOC in my second year of engineering. But being confident enough about my skills I decided to apply for it in my first year. I thought that if I get selected then it will be a big achievement and a dream come true earlier than expected and even if I don't get selected I will be having the "necessary experience" so that I can crack it next year and it really turned out to be a really good decision.
That's it for now. I will be adding more posts sooner so stay connected for more. I hope that it wasn't boring.
Thanks,
Harshit Bansal.
Great going sir, you're an inspiration for us all. All the best! :)
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