GSoC 2017 Proposal: Julia Integration in Kdevelop

[Boudhayan Gupta]

Hi Geetam,


On 2 April 2017 at 22:07, Geetam Chawla <geetam.chawla at gmail.com> wrote:
>>Hi Geetam,
>
>>I'm a little surprised you've picked a project where you add support
>>for a language to an IDE when you say you have only elementary
>>knowledge of Julia.
>
> I don't think that my lack of in-depth knowledge of julia will affect
> the quality of plugin that I will develop as it will be done with the
> help of a language server. Most of the code will be written in c++.

I like this part of the proposal very much - the use of the VSCode
language server extension. Note that GSoC rules don't allow
collaboration in a project between two students, so it's quite
possible that we'll end up with two implementations of the same thing
unless we can find a creative way of bypassing that rule while still
keeping with the spirit of the law.

I'm going to presume you're capable enough of learning the bits and
pieces of Julia that need to be learnt as and when required. With this
presumption:

>>Have you ever used Julia before?
>
> I used it in my university course for numerical methods.

Good, so you know how to use the language. Could we see some code?

>>Was Julia good enough for your use-case?
>
> Yes, It worked pretty well.
>
>>Why are you motivated enough to add support for that particular language
>> into KDevelop?
>
> What impressed me about julia is how easy is it to get something done in
> julia and yet it is as fast as languages like go and rust, also going by the
> trends it is likely to get more popular as time goes by.

I don't buy this. A simple internet search reveals R is more in demand
in the job market and growing faster. However, if you're convinced
Julia is the tool you'll need to get most of your work done, that's a
good enough reason to do this.

>
>>In between that and the fact that you'll be unavailable for 4 weeks or
>>so for your university finals I'm a little sceptical about this
>>proposal.
>
> I am sorry perhaps I should have formatted it better, but May 16 to June 7
> is about 3 weeks, and my university finals take place over a period of 2
> weeks, now since I do not know the exact schedule of my university finals,
> I thought it would be a good idea to list 3 weeks a possible period of
> inactivity. I do not believe in overpromising and under delivering.

Yes, private Indian universities suck in this regard. Whether or not
this unavailability will be a major problem, will need to be decided
collectively by other mentors.

> I was actually planning to work 10 hrs a day for the whole summer to make
> sure that

Whoa there, that's 50 hours a week (70 if you plan on working
weekends). Not only is that severely unrealistic, you'll burn out
pretty fast if you try that.

The FAQ states that you'll expect to work 30+ hours a week. A standard
working contract here in Germany is about 38-42 hours a week, and
that's usually the sweet spot for most people between productivity and
sanity preservation. I'd like you to re-evaluate that last statement
and make a more realistic commitment :-)

I think you're looking good with that proposal, but I do see you're
overenthusiastic and prone to making unrealistic commitments (which is
both a really good thing and a really bad thing). I'd say take it
easy, sleep on it tonight, and revise this if needed with a fresh mind
tomorrow. If you think you can stick to exactly what you've written
after thinking about it, we'll evaluate that too - just take some time
to think.

Also, just so that you don't accidentally miss the deadline (it's
Tuesday 12:30 AM IST, I think), please submit a final copy of the
proposal on WithGoogle. I believe you can update it later, and if not
in exceptional cases you can mail in an updated proposal to us.

Again, you're looking good. You can do this!

Freundliche Grüße
Boudhayan Gupta
KDE e.V. - Sysadmin and Community Working Groups
+49 151 71032970