Googlepipski
Yup, I quit Summer of Code. I'm not proud of it. But, there you go.
It's been pretty rocky for a while now. Inbetween exams eating up the first 3 weeks, visiting my family and sorting out moving house tomorrow, I haven't had the time or the energy for it. I spent a long time figuring out what I was going to do and how I was going to do it but then never quite reached a stage where I felt I knew enough about what I was doing to start coding.
It's a shame to pass up the money but I think I still got a lot of valuable experience from it. What I learnt is this:
1) Joining an existing project is TOUGH. Just figuring out what's going on in the existing code will take many many hours of head-scratching and caffeine cramming.
2) Programming in the real world is not the same as programming in university. I see how little we were actually taught in our design patterns course and how much I still don't know about real programming.
3) Working from home is extremely difficult.
4) Eclipse is an utter memory hog and made me wait for minutes at a time before letting me do anything. CVS is awful compared with SVN.
5) Programming isn't nearly as much fun when other people are telling you what to do and you have a time limit to run from. One should never underestimate the brain's creative side and recognise when it isn't being given enough to do.
I plan to stick with the PyDev project as a part-time contributor and see if I can finish what I started or turn my attention to a different aspect of it. Open source programming can be fun. But I'd rather do it in my time and on my terms.
I'm quite glad I put in an application with IT Wales, now, because I have a full-time job working at Caer Las, a charity for the homeless. Programming in Access and VBA is horrible, but at least the money comes in every week. People at the office seem nice and friendly and my supervisor's a good bloke.
Shame to leave Google, but never mind. It was fun while it lasted.
[ Entry posted at: Fri 30 Jun 2006 12:57:19 UTC | 2 comment(s)... | Cat: Geeky ]
Tobeon writes:
Never mind about Summer of Code, you gave it a shot :)
about ITwales, how did you get the job exactly? I didn%u2019t hear anything back from them (I guess people aren%u2019t really interested in first years!) but what is the processes if they do get back to you etc (hopefully next year I will be more successful with IT Wales)
[ Fri 30 Jun 2006 13:27:01 UTC ]
Sean writes:
I submitted a CV and filled in their online questionnaire, waited a couple of months and then started getting phonecalls in May. Turned up to interviews and was offered this job. So I took it :-)
I think you'll have a better chance next Summer, mate. In the meantime, enjoy not having to work!
[ Fri 30 Jun 2006 14:00:06 UTC ]