From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Junio C Hamano Subject: Re: Google Summer of Code 2013 (GSoC13) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:44:00 -0800 Message-ID: <7vd2voz3tr.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> References: <87ehgd1qq2.fsf@pctrast.inf.ethz.ch> <20130218174239.GB22832@sigill.intra.peff.net> <453931856.Va6j4WpQCl@flomedio> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, Jeff King , Thomas Rast , Shawn Pearce , Jakub Narebski , Christian Couder , Pat Thoyts , Paul Mackerras , Carlos =?utf-8?Q?Mart=C3=ADn?= Nieto , Thomas Gummerer , Ramkumar Ramachandra , Jens Lehmann , Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy , David Barr To: Florian Achleitner X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Mon Feb 25 18:44:36 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UA26O-0003mB-7X for gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org; Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:44:36 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758843Ab3BYRoH (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:44:07 -0500 Received: from b-pb-sasl-quonix.pobox.com ([208.72.237.35]:64123 "EHLO smtp.pobox.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758842Ab3BYRoE (ORCPT ); Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:44:04 -0500 Received: from smtp.pobox.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by b-sasl-quonix.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C37F4A0AA; Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:44:03 -0500 (EST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed; d=pobox.com; h=from:to:cc :subject:references:date:in-reply-to:message-id:mime-version :content-type; s=sasl; bh=i7wD9W/2AJZdGAUPNSD994DoVOc=; b=fGqheX JrkFiDRVb8bCUYU2a7TbcMQppW/+4pcvpCGHwUSfyRhSmVBjUh0m7hbrWXXtS48L 2wMyZfHVGiVviNR8Ft9B8V102JCozSM/7EJn+7oeRsYc8kCU+3UeTKoFtrrRuplz F1y3J6k94wFw244YJr+CDTH4Ov8TJ0lATQz7o= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=pobox.com; h=from:to:cc :subject:references:date:in-reply-to:message-id:mime-version :content-type; q=dns; s=sasl; b=b+7+aR7Mn7ZDjev/Z4fmC+988jZa402/ 8D1uCLUH6g2crvFpymEo/bSpgOMjkfw0d5MQlQdy42izSpVUEAykh2chXNGtPedd j2W99x9hXIJSnUMdcFlfDJSDMUWFr5jefPHQgLhG7hYwni0tPcKmob1JcnbH4qsr qmyl+fpyV3E= Received: from b-pb-sasl-quonix.pobox.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by b-sasl-quonix.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 20518A0A8; Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:44:03 -0500 (EST) Received: from pobox.com (unknown [98.234.214.94]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by b-sasl-quonix.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 11AE8A0A3; Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:44:01 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <453931856.Va6j4WpQCl@flomedio> (Florian Achleitner's message of "Mon, 25 Feb 2013 10:12:18 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.2 (gnu/linux) X-Pobox-Relay-ID: F1001E2E-7F72-11E2-B2F2-27D12E706CDE-77302942!b-pb-sasl-quonix.pobox.com Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Florian Achleitner writes: > For a student one aspect of GSOC is also quite important: It is a cool and > demanding summer job during the holidays, but it has to ramp down when the new > semester starts. Thanks for sharing. I think an important lesson is that mentors and reviewers need to think really hard to limit the initial scope of the assignment to be not too ambitious. Starting with an ambitious goal and achieving only small first steps of them _can_ still be a good end result, but if a mentor wants to go that route, the decision to cut down the scope of an ambitous assignment needs to be made early enough to leave sufficient time to wrap up the half-done assignment in a good shape. Finishing with implementation of only the initial 30% of an unproven design, that by itself is not useful, does not help our project at all, and it does not give satisfaction to the student, either.