Summer of Code projects

[Chris Smith]

Hey CodeWorld users,

We're approaching the season of Google Summer of Code again.  CodeWorld has had a long and successful history of hosting Summer of Code students inside of the haskell.org project.

1. Stefan Jacholke built CodeWorld Blocks, the block-based language front-end, as part of Summer of Haskell in 2016
   
2. Four students worked on CodeWorld in 2017, building the debug inspection UI (Eric Roberts), folders and sharing and a prototype of collaborative editing (Parv Mor), error message improvements (Pranjal Tale), and prototyping some export features (Venkat Srikanth)
   
3. Krystal Maughan built CodeWorld's time-traveling debugger and other debug controls last summer in 2018.
   

Haskell is once again planning to participate, and there's plenty of CodeWorld-related work that would make great projects.  Want to help?  Here's how you can.

Have an idea for what you'd like to see?

If you have a fully-formed idea, project suggestions can be submitted via github as explained at https://summer.haskell.org/ideas.html  If you only have a problem that should be solved but no clear answer, or a concept that's not yet a fully formed project idea, mention it on the mailing list and we can help you work out exactly what how a student might best tackle the problem.  (Keep in mind, though, that each student should be customizing the suggestion in their proposal, anyway.  One lesson I've learned from past CodeWorld projects is that it's important to leave room for a student to write their own proposal!  Students are more successful when they are working on something they were personally involved in designing.)

As you think of ideas, remember that the Haskell organization has been very good about selecting CodeWorld-based proposals in the past, but it's also important to me to be good citizens in return and work for the benefit of the whole community.  Improvements to the Haskell ecosystem that benefit CodeWorld and other projects together are definitely worthwhile.  Some examples might include improvements to GHCJS (or maybe Asterius, which CodeWorld is likely to use in the future when it's more complete), GHC error messages (with a specific promising proposal, or at least set of examples with a feasible implementation), language tooling infrastructure that CodeWorld could piggyback on (e.g., anyone for more machine-readable Haddock output?), or components that we might build for CodeWorld but that could be useful elsewhere (e.g., work on the requirements checker).

Interested in being a mentor or student?

It's not yet time to start lining up students and mentors.  This will happen in March (for students) and April (for mentors).  That said, if you're gearing up to apply for a CodeWorld-related project as a student and are new to CodeWorld, it's never too early to start getting familiar with the project and how it works, perhaps by working your way through the guide at http://code.world.  And if you're interested in mentoring, the first step is to make sure the information is there to get students excited about the projects you'd like to mentor.

Thanks,

Chris

[Chris Smith]

If anyone has opinions to share on my write-up of possible CodeWorld projects for Google Summer of Code, please comment at https://github.com/haskell-org/summer-of-haskell/pull/80.

Thanks,

Chris