Summer of Code officially ended on August 20th, so I thought I would write a post that summarized my experiences with Camino and SoC. Better late then never, eh?

The Mozilla Foundation

My goal for the summer was to hack on Objective-C code. There are not many options out there for summer work as far as Cocoa goes, so I applied to Google for an internship as well as for Summer of Code. The first time I looked at the mentoring organizations, the only Cocoa related program I saw was Adium.

I knew that having only one proposal did not have good odds at getting accepted, so I started to seek other organizations that might be Mac-related. There was VLC which had a request out for someone to improve their Mac integration. That however required greater knowledge of C and video codecs than I possessed (and my beard is not quite long enough yet). So, luckily a few days before the deadline I put two and two together and remembered that Camino was a part of The Mozilla Foundation (insert stupid joke here). I checked their ideas for possible projects and was really excited about the Tabsposé request. I then wrote my proposal for Tabsposé as well as another one for Applescript (to better my chances) and then hit the submit button.

Great Success

A few days after my Google internship rejection, the GSoC results were posted. After some technical difficulties and false results, Google finally got the accepted students list posted and lucky for me, my name was on it.

As happy I was for getting accepted into SoC, I had mixed feelings. First, I would have to go home to New Jersey for the summer. Nothing against New Jersey, it was just that all of my close friends were either in Boston or somewhere else. Also I would miss the neat technology related events that go on in the city all the time. The other aspect that bothered me was that I would not be in a work setting interacting with other human beings.

My Experiences

As I stated above, not having actual human interaction while working can be a maddening experience. Personally I tend to have the most fun working when hacking away with fellow hackers in the room. That is not to say that SoC robs you of this experience, because location is arbitrary as long as you get your project completed. However, in my case most of my interaction was on IRC.

You can now put down the violin as I will now talk about the positive aspects of SoC. My favorite aspect of Summer of Code is the creative freedom you get with it. It’s probably not the case in all SoC projects, however I loved the fact that I had total control over this cool new feature. I saw no line between work and passion leading to many sleepless nights fueled by passion and Diet Coke. Many of my friends would complain about work and say how tired they were, but I got to work when I wanted, where I wanted, and how I wanted. Being able to sleep in every day is a luxury, one I will dearly miss.

My experiences with my fellow Camino developers could have not been better. They were very welcoming in the beginning and really made me feel at ease. I was lucky enough to meet many of them at the Camino Meet-up in June where I was able to associate a face-to-handle. My mentor Stuart Morgan is a brilliant programmer who was always there to help me when I was stuck on something or needed advice on a new feature. My programming skills have gotten a lot better thanks to the code review process and the perfection that The Camino Project demands.

Daily Affirmation

Overall, I must say that Summer of Code was a great experience. Knowing that my contribution will be used by thousands of users and be seen as a great new addition to Camino is totally worth it. I’ve no right to complain, all the Camino developers do all this great work for free and they deserve much credit as they can get. I was fortunate enough to live off Google payments to work on one of the most innovative web browsers out there.

I am still working on finishing Tabsposé and plan to stay on as a developer for Camino. There are a few features that I would like to possibly add to the browser and some bugs that need fix’n. I am most happy to have met and made friends with many of the Camino developers. They are a fun and very interesting bunch and I look forward to working with them in the future.