GSoC Proposal - Looking for feedback

[Vivek Narayanan]

Hi Folks,

I am Vivek from 2nd year Tronix, and I am working on a proposal for
Customizable Serialization in Django. Django is a python based web
application framework and the project I'm working on would enable
users to serialize database data and create APIs for their apps.

I had sent a draft proposal earlier to the mailing list and that got
trashed , now I've written an improved proposal but I'm looking for
some feedback on it before posting it to the group again.

Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/a/vivekn.co.cc/document/pub?id=1GMWW42sY8cLZ2XRtVEDA9BQzmsqnCNULzskDMwqSUXI

Looking for some suggestions and tips.

Thanks,

Vivek Narayanan

[Atul Aggarwal]

Hi Vivek,

Can you please share the link of your previous proposal and possibly the email thread in which it got trashed so that we can learn the reason why it got trashed and might help you in reviewing this proposal.

Thanks
-atul

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Regards,

Atul Aggarwal

[Rohit Yadav]

Hi Vivek,

Looks like we've a python hacker here, you application seems nice.
Alright, some suggestions:
Send them a (qualification patch) on their devel ML, which can be
fixing a bug from Django's bug tracker. It would be great if you can
build a django based web app (a blog for example) to show them that
you know thy framework; in your application and on irc explain them
why having this serialization feature is important for Django. Most
important of all, goto Django's IRC/ML and just hang out with other
hackers, you're doing all of this to get noticed. Ask them if your
idea is good enough for a SoC project, sometimes your ideas may not
interest dev community which can result in dropping you application,
even though you're a hacker material.

I see you've got some projects of yours, impressive! You're using
github, so you know git, try bitbucket.org so you'll learn python
based hg, python folks love hg/bitbucket. You may mail me if you have
any other questions.

HTH,
Rohit

[Vivek Narayanan]

@Rohit: Thanks for all your suggestions. I did submit a couple of
patches, but the "getting noticed" part seems harder than I thought
and it feels a bit intimidating.

@Atul: The earlier proposal was more or less the same except for the
timeline and it was less organized. I have no experience in writing a
schedule for a software project and that was probably why it got
trashed.

Here's that mail again.
------------------------
On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 2:41 PM, Vivek Narayanan <m...@vivekn.co.cc>
wrote:
> ...
> Here is a list of deliverables for the project:

> • Investigate existing structure of the serializer, make changes,
> refactor to suit needs. (1 week)

> • Implement metadata methods, change the ``fields`` argument of
> serialize(), write unit tests. (2 weeks)

> • Implement structures and templates parsing for custom serialization,
> configurations for XML/JSON/YAML etc. Also, write tests for this. (2
> weeks)

> • Handling of nested and related models. (1 week)

> • Investigate the changes to be made at deserialization side and
> implement them. (1 week)

> • More tests and write documentation. (2 weeks)

> This is a conservative estimate and am keeping 3 weeks as a cushion.

Here's some advice: If this is what your final plan looks like, I
would expect that your proposal would be rejected. Here's why:

* We prefer projects to have a clear design in mind before
implementation begins. It's ok if refinements happen along the way,
but "investigation" periods (and you have 2 of them) are not something
that should be required. You investigate while you develop your
proposal.

* Testing isn't an activity that can be clearly separated. It's an
integral part of code development. Having a "more tests" activity
indicates you either haven't allocated enough time for testing during
development, or you're trying to pad your timeline.

* Padding with a 3 week cushion gives the impression that you haven't
thought about the effort required. 3 weeks of full time development is
a long time.

* I'm sceptical of any plan that consists of "2 week" estimates.
Again -- a week is a long time. If you can't clearly express what will
be developed, tested and delivered in a week long timeframe, then I
don't think you've thought about the problem hard enough -- at least,
not hard enough for us to recommend that Google give you $4k, and
someone from the project spend many hours mentoring you.

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)