On January 16, 2012, Google Code In 2011 officially ended. Google Code In, summed up in one sentence, is an international contest that mainly is about programming. Of course, there are other tasks like writing promotional articles, creating tutorials, and of course, translation work. To advance quickly, one has to know programming, though it is possible to get into the top ten without programming skills, though it is very hard. The top ten people (last year it was the top fourteen) get to go visit Google Headquarters in Mountainview, California. This year was my first year, and I got off to a rough start. By the way, this contest is for 13-17 year old people from around the world.
One of the baest things about Google Code In is that you get to do “real” work. I’m talking about work for Open Source software. Anyone can contribute to Open Source software. The best thing is, the additions/modifications that you make to the software will go into effect the next time a release comes out. This is real world stuff. Your name will be on the developer list.
For every three tasks completed, the participant receives US$100. The maximum you can earn is US$500. Through math skills, you might be able to (hopefully) figure out that you have to complete 15 tasks to get to US$500. If you want to get to the top ten, you probably need to have at least 100 points.
This brings me to my next topic: scoring. For easy tasks, you get one point, medium earns you two points, and hard earns you three to four points (usually three). This brings me to another topic.
Ever heard of VideoLAN? How about VLC Player? That’s an open source project that participated in Google Code In. Most students who made it into the top ten did at least one task for VideoLAN. Well, apparently, the mentors (those people are the ones who review your work and give you the points) were awarding an arbitrary amount of points, which resulted in scoring discrepancies. Here’s the “official” email:
After much discussion and evaluation, the only change from our assessment of some discrepancies in VideoLAN’s scoring system will be on the leaderboard. Specifically, no points will be awarded for tasks completed with VideoLAN from January 5th until the close of the contest. This was not an easy decision for us as we realize all of the students worked very hard during the contest and we want your hard work to be rewarded. If you are a student that is affected by this we are very sorry and unfortunately there is no way to be fair to everyone involved in this situation.
I finished in 16th place, according to the official leaderboard. This is out of (about) 544 students. This year was my first year in Google Code In, and I’m pretty proud of my work. My original goal was to complete one task. I completed 34 tasks with 67 points.
What happened
At first, I did work for a Open Source project named Limesurvey, written in PHP, a language that I was, at that time, somewhat familliar with. I learned a lot about Limesurvey and two frameworks of PHP: CodeIgniter and Yii.
Then, I went to OpenIntents, because all the tasks that were doable (for me) at Limesurvey had already been completed. OpenIntents involves developing Android applications. I did one (or two) tasks for them. The problem was that they were a bit slow in reviewing tasks. I then did an OpenSUSE task and some VideoLAN.
I ended up at Apertium one stormy night. Apertium is an Open Source machine translation toolbox. There, I used a skill that I never thought I would have to use: my knowledge of the Norwegian language.
I’m not brilliant in Norwegian, nor do I strive to be, but I can pass as “somewhat fluent” on a good day. I don’t have a lot of good days, by the way. I will not go into much detail about what I did there (you can look it up, probably), but it involved Norwegian to English translation. I also did some Java application building there, as well.
I think that Google Code In was a great learning experience for me, as well as some good exposure to the “real world”. I have compiled a (somewhat humorous) list of some disadvantages you might have in Google Code In.
You are disadvantaged if…
- You don’t know any programming.
- You don’t know an uncommon European language (for translation purposes).
- You live in a country that does not celebrate Christmas (Christmas=holiday=more time to spend coding)
- You have no internet connection.
- You don’t speak English that well.
- You don’t like in Europe. The majority of all mentors are Europeans. There’s a big time zone difference (like six to eight hours) for North Americans.
- You can do Hindi translation, and that’s all you know how to do. Well, you’ll have a lot of competition.
- You don’t know how to send an email/use an IRC Channel.
- You aren’t familliar with SVN (required for some tasks).
- You aren’t familliar with Linux commands. See below.
- You don’t have Linux installed. Any major distro (Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSUSE, Mandrake, Fedora/Redhat, etc) is fine.
- You act unfriendly, arrogant, pretentious, impolite, snobby, etc to your mentors. They will not like you. Remember that they are the ones that award you the points.
- You are a slow typer. This contest is very technology-oriented.
- You have a life. If you want to get into the top ten, you should consider throwing out your life and site in front of the computer all day.
