Xapian devel - Mar 2014 - Regarding Participation in Google Summer of Code 2014.

Hi,
   I am Mayank Chaudhary (irc name - mayank) studying in Indian Institute
of Technology, Roorkee. I am a Junior Year Student. I want to apply for
Learning to Rank project. But the thing is I have an internship offer for
this summer from 5th May 2014 to 4th July 2014 (i.e approximately 7 weeks
overlap). I heard about rishabh's dropout. So, basically, I want to ask
that is it OK if I do both things together. I really want to do the project
and at the same time be fair to it too.

I talked to Parth about it on IRC. He suggested me that I could start the
work early and then have a little light schedule during my Internship. I
also talked to my seniors (who have interned there last year) about it.
They told me that office hours would be at most 8 hours a day and I'm also
pretty accurate with the figure. Furthermore, I think the projects in GSOC
demand nearly 30-40 hours a week. So I can start 3 weeks earlier and then
during the internship take out at least take out 4 hours on Mon-Sat and I
am totally free on Sundays. After completion of my internship I'll always
be available for LETOR.

Are my chances of getting selected really low because of this reason? I
guess you wouldn't prefer someone with an internship because of what
happened in 2012.
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On Tue, Mar 04, 2014 at 07:38:01PM +0530, Mayank Chaudhary
wrote:
>    I am Mayank Chaudhary (irc name - mayank) studying in Indian Institute
> of Technology, Roorkee. I am a Junior Year Student. I want to apply for
> Learning to Rank project. But the thing is I have an internship offer for
> this summer from 5th May 2014 to 4th July 2014 (i.e approximately 7 weeks
> overlap). I heard about rishabh's dropout. So, basically, I want to ask
> that is it OK if I do both things together. I really want to do the project
> and at the same time be fair to it too.
The timing is rather unfortunate, as that clashes with half the coding
period.  I think my recommendation would be to choose either GSoC or the
internship, rather than trying to do both.
> I talked to Parth about it on IRC. He suggested me that I could start the
> work early and then have a little light schedule during my Internship.
It's certainly pretty common for students to have some exams or some
classes during the coding period, and to deal with that by starting
coding early, so there is some flexibility.
> I also talked to my seniors (who have interned there last year) about it.
> They told me that office hours would be at most 8 hours a day and I'm
also
> pretty accurate with the figure. Furthermore, I think the projects in GSOC
> demand nearly 30-40 hours a week. So I can start 3 weeks earlier and then
> during the internship take out at least take out 4 hours on Mon-Sat and I
> am totally free on Sundays. After completion of my internship I'll
always
> be available for LETOR.
I'm dubious about plans to work very long days and/or without days off
(both in GSoC and in companies).  It might work OK for a week or maybe
two, but you're just going to end up always tired and not being
productive (either in your project or the internship).  You really need
to be sharp to develop code effectively.

I think the most productive time of my life was when Richard and I had
an office to ourselves and were working on the early version of what's
now Xapian.  We worked intensely for about 6 hours most days, but got a
huge amount done.

So if you're really determined to try to do both, I'd be happier with a
plan to start working as early as you can, and to just try to do a few
hours each week during the internship period.
> Are my chances of getting selected really low because of this reason? I
> guess you wouldn't prefer someone with an internship because of what
> happened in 2012.
The biggest problem there was that we didn't even know about the
internship (we didn't find out until well after the student had stopped
working on the project and we'd failed him).  I'd certainly rather
students were honest with us in their applications.

But it probably does put you at a disadvantage - if you were choosing
between two similar quality applications from two students who seemed
equally capable, but one planned to do an internship for half the
official coding period, who would you pick?

Cheers,
    Olly