GHOP contest progress report
As Andre Roberge points out, the PSF is looking for more Python-oriented projects for the Google Highly Open Participation contest. At some point earlier this afternoon, the last task from our list was claimed. As far as I can tell, we’re the first team to have that happen, and it means we’re out of tasks for aspiring contestants. Given the popularity of the Python group within GHOP, we need to come up with some new ideas, and quick!
We have a few ideas tumbling around the mentors’ list, but are still open to your ideas. If you have any suggestions, head over to the ghop-python list and post them!
What sorts of tasks can we use? We’ve had good response for translation tasks, documentation and testing tasks, as well as some more difficult development tasks. We have a couple of contestants with some pretty good C coding skills who are interested in working with extension modules. The level of technical skill is actually quite surprising.
I don’t want to give away the specifics until we open the new tasks, but I will say quite frankly: I’ve run out of lightweight tasks, so there won’t be a lot of fluff. I started out this contest thinking we needed to introduce the kids to “real” development gently. Boy, have I ever been disabused of that notion. As webchick points out in her Drupal report, these kids are smarter than we were at their age. I’m starting to write some of the personal projects that have been lingering on my to-do list for a while now. I need those itches scratched, but I’m not so proud that I have to do it myself.