Need help with my SoC proposal.

[Fırat Can Başarır]

Hello,

I am a CS student from Turkey. I want to apply for Django's GSoC
program this year. I have some ideas but am quite confused regarding
what to propose. I want to give some information about myself so
someone more experienced can point me in the right direction.

I have been working on several Django projects for more than 2 years.
I am one of the senior developers who built the largest Django based
website in Turkey: http://markafoni.com . It is a clone of http://vente-privee.com,
a private online shopping site. Markafoni ships more than 1000 items
per day and the traffic is enormous. The system runs on several
application servers, 2 db servers and a gateway. There are also
several servers for backup. I have experience with almost every aspect
of Django: scaling problems, writing complex widgets and forms,
middlewares, context processors, etc.

Because of my course load, I had to quit Markafoni last year, since it
was getting very demanding for me. Right now, I am working part-time
at my university as a member of the web-team. I managed to convince my
co-workers to convert all the websites within the university to be
built with Django and they are happier than ever.

This year I have taken two courses that I like the best in my entire
college life: SICP and PLAI. These courses teach and help us analyze
structure of programming languages and paradigms, compilers,
interpreters, etc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLAI).
PLAI is, basically, a course where we keep improving a very basic
interpreter that we write at the begging of the semester. I was the
top of class in SICP and PLAI is still ongoing at the moment. But I
think the results will be the same for PLAI. That's why I believe
working on template compilation idea proposed on the SoC page would be
a good choice for me. Should I devote myself to designing a solution
for this problem or would you suggest I take a look at others?

That's all I can think of right now. I'd appreciate some feedback.

Thank you.
Fırat

[Russell Keith-Magee]

2010/3/23 Fırat Can Başarır <firatca...@gmail.com>:

Hi Fırat,

Thanks for the kind words about Django, and for your interest in the GSoC.

Regarding your choice of project: you should be warned that template
compilation is on the list as a result of a suggestion from Alex
Gaynor. Alex is a long time contributor to Django (as well as a
contributor to PyPy and Unladen Swallow), was a GSoC project student
last year (implementing Multiple Database support), and intends to
apply again this year - to implement template compilation. The email
referenced on Django's SoC wiki page was his first draft at a project
proposal.

Alex isn't necessarily guaranteed to get this project, but he has a
lot of directly relevant experience, and a history of completing
ambitious projects in the Django community. Unless you have a lot of
directly relevant experience of your own, Alex is likely to beat you
to this particular project. So, If you're looking to maximize the
chance that your SoC application will be successful, I would recommend
looking at a different project.

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)

[Alex_Gaynor]

On Mar 22, 8:21 pm, Russell Keith-Magee <freakboy3...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> 2010/3/23 Fırat Can Başarır <firatcanbasa...@gmail.com>:

>
>
>
>
>
> > Hello,
>
> > I am a CS student from Turkey. I want to apply for Django's GSoC
> > program this year. I have some ideas but am quite confused regarding
> > what to propose. I want to give some information about myself so
> > someone more experienced can point me in the right direction.
>
> > I have been working on several Django projects for more than 2 years.
> > I am one of the senior developers who built the largest Django based

> > website in Turkey:http://markafoni.com. It is a clone ofhttp://vente-privee.com,

> > a private online shopping site. Markafoni ships more than 1000 items
> > per day and the traffic is enormous. The system runs on several
> > application servers, 2 db servers and a gateway. There are also
> > several servers for backup. I have experience with almost every aspect
> > of Django: scaling problems, writing complex widgets and forms,
> > middlewares, context processors, etc.
>
> > Because of my course load, I had to quit Markafoni last year, since it
> > was getting very demanding for me. Right now, I am working part-time
> > at my university as a member of the web-team. I managed to convince my
> > co-workers to convert all the websites within the university to be
> > built with Django and they are happier than ever.
>
> > This year I have taken two courses that I like the best in my entire
> > college life: SICP and PLAI. These courses teach and help us analyze
> > structure of programming languages and paradigms, compilers,
> > interpreters, etc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

> > Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLAI).

Fırat,

If you're serious about this project I'm more than willing to let you
take it, and I'll apply with a different project I have. Let me know
before the GSOC application period opens :)

Alex

[Firat Can Basarir]

Alex,

I want to work on Django during this GSoC. I have other options but I want to contribute to Django as it is the application that I use the most for work. Being said that, template compilation problem seems both challenging and reasonable for me. But the problem is the fact that your proposal... umm... kinda... scares me.

You know the internals a lot better than I do (hint: I spent 30 minutes looking at Django source code in total). Next week is our midterm week so I think I will have ~10 hours until 4th of March. When you combine these facts, we can assume that it is quite unlikely for me to prepare a proposal close to yours.

In summary, I still want to do it but I have a lot of work to do. I need to read about other template engines and see if I can get some ideas about them. I am not sure if I can do it in time. I like your approach (I assume you were inspired by Jinja. Were you?) but, as I said, I don't think I can come up with a better proposal.

Thank you.

Fırat

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[Firat Can Basarir]

Btw, are you doing this as a gesture or do you have other projects in mind, that are more appealing than this one?

I have been a member of this list for a few days now. I have read all the SoC proposals and Russell's responses. I think that Django is one of the most demanding communities when it comes to preparing a proposal. I like it but I am not sure if it is realistic. Some other projects I have been considering to apply do the following:

- Decide on a feature that is reasonable for a good programmer without prior knowledge of system internals

- Encourage the applicants to show that they are good enough to do so. This doesn't necessarily include  a detailed design or a clear vision of the upcoming challenges.

Django on the other hands requires a lot more work. I am not saying this is the wrong way to do it but simply a participant needs to spend a lot more time to come up with a proposal that is reasonable for you guys. I can see the motivation behind this, you want to make sure Django gets the most benefit from this year's GSoC. Unfortunately, as I said, I am not sure if I have enough time (literally, I am not sure if I do or don't). So don't give up this project for me if you want to do it. Because if I fail at writing a decent proposal, that'll be a huge loss. 

tl;dr: I want you to let me do it but I don't want to be selfish because if I can't come up with a decent proposal it will be a waste of time. 4 days ago I was very confident but now, I am not.

Thanks.

Fırat

[Russell Keith-Magee]

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:49 PM, Firat Can Basarir
<firatca...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Btw, are you doing this as a gesture or do you have other projects in mind,
> that are more appealing than this one?
> I have been a member of this list for a few days now. I have read all the
> SoC proposals and Russell's responses. I think that Django is one of the
> most demanding communities when it comes to preparing a proposal. I like it
> but I am not sure if it is realistic. Some other projects I have been
> considering to apply do the following:
> - Decide on a feature that is reasonable for a good programmer without prior
> knowledge of system internals
> - Encourage the applicants to show that they are good enough to do so. This
> doesn't necessarily include  a detailed design or a clear vision of the
> upcoming challenges.

By way of explanation: the process of developing a detailed design is
how we determine whether applicants are good enough. When we get an
application from someone who doesn't have a history with the project,
we need to have some way to evaluate their capabilities. I don't know
how other projects do this, but a practical test is one generally
reliable way to perform this sort of evaluation.

In this case, the practical test requires the applicant to:
* Read and understand a proposal brief,
* Explore the codebase to identify the major issues that exist
* Possibly write some prototype code to demonstrate an idea
* Interact with the developer community to clarify any points of interest
* Develop a clear and compelling full proposal that addresses the
major issues and explains an idea.

In many ways this is a microcosm of what the full 12 week project will
involve. If a potential applicant can't complete the practical test,
then we don't really have any reason to believe that they will be able
to complete a full 12 week programming project, either.

I appreciate that developing a proposal like this this is a difficult
process, but anything worthwhile is always difficult :-)

That said - we're open to any suggestions on how to make the process
more accessible. We want to get the best applicants we can, but if our
process is somehow preventing that from happening, we're open to any
suggestions on how to improve the process.

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)

[Alex Gaynor]

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Firat Can Basarir

I have a second project I am absolutely willing to work on if you want
to take this, do not feel compelled to drop it because I was here
first.

Alex

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your
right to say it." -- Voltaire
"The people's good is the highest law." -- Cicero
"Code can always be simpler than you think, but never as simple as you
want" -- Me