A call to all students: if you have ever thought it would be cool to write code and see it make a difference in the world, then please keep reading. We are excited to announce the next editions of two programs designed to introduce students to open source software development, Google Summer of Code for university students and Google Code-in for 13-17 year old students.
Google Code-in - Program starts for students December 1, 2014
For the fifth consecutive year, we are happy to announce Google Code-in, an international, online contest designed to introduce 13-17 year old pre-university students to the world of open source development. Open source projects are about more than just coding, and this contest highlights a variety of ways to contribute to open source projects.
When you read the term open source, do you think:
- What is open source?
- What types of work do open source projects do?
- I’ve only taken one computer science class, can I contribute to an open source project?
- I’m not really into coding, how else can I contribute to open source?
- I’ve never participated in open source or an online contest before, can someone help guide me?
- Open source sounds fun, how can I get started?
If you’ve wondered about any of these questions and are a pre-university student (age 13-17) then we hope you will join in the fun and excitement of the Google Code-in contest starting Monday, December 1st.
For seven weeks from early December to mid January, the Google Code-in contest will have students working with up to 12 selected open source projects on a variety of tasks. The different categories of tasks that students will be able to work on include:
For seven weeks from early December to mid January, the Google Code-in contest will have students working with up to 12 selected open source projects on a variety of tasks. The different categories of tasks that students will be able to work on include:
- Code: writing or refactoring
- Documentation/Training: creating/editing documents and helping others learn more
- Outreach/research: community management, outreach/marketing, or studying problems and recommending solutions
- Quality Assurance: testing and ensuring code is of high quality
- User Interface: user experience research or user interface design and interaction
Over the past four years, we have had 1,575 students from 78 countries complete tasks in the contest. This year we hope to surpass 2,000 students.
Visit the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Google Code-in site for more details on how to sign up and participate. We will announce the open source organizations that will be participating in the contest on November 12. The Google Code-in contest starts for students on December 1. We look forward to welcoming hundreds of students from around the world into the open source family again this year.
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Back in 2005, Google made a commitment to support open source software contributors. In addition to our other programs to build and support the contributor base, we thought a great way to get more people involved was to introduce the wide world of open source to college students.
Google Summer of Code is an innovative program dedicated to introducing students from universities around the world to open source software development. The program offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects mentored by a wide variety of carefully selected open source projects. Our goal is to help these students pursue academic challenges over the summer break while they create and release open source code for the benefit of all. Over the past 10 years, over 8,300 mentors and 8,500 student developers in 101 countries have produced a stunning 55 million lines of code. Our goal is to help these students pursue academic challenges over the summer break while they create and release open source code for the benefit of all.
Spread the word to your friends! If you know of a university student that would be interested in working on open source projects this summer, or if you know of an organization that might want to mentor students to work on their open source projects, please direct them to our Google Summer of Code 2015 website where they can find our timeline along with the FAQs. Stay tuned for more details coming soon!
By Stephanie Taylor and Carol Smith, Open Source Programs
