Conclusion blogpost for Scala GSoC 2021

_posts/2021-09-27-gsoc-conclusion.md

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+---
+category: blog-detail
+post-type: blog
+by: Vincenzo Bazzucchi, Scala Center
+title: "Scala GSoC 2021 is finished: meet the team!"
+---
+
+Google Summer of Code (further: GSoC) 2021 edition is completed 🎉
+
+In this post we want to celebrate the students and mentors who made Scala GSoC
+2021 a success!
+
+GSoC is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to
+University students who successfully contribute to open source projects. The
+goal is to help open source projects identify and bring in new developers by
+offering students the opportunity to gain real-world software development
+experience.
+
+## Scala GSoC 2021: Introducing students and projects
+
+The Scala Center had the honor to organize Scala GSoC 2021 and the pleasure to
+help coordinate 4 brilliant students and their mentors. In this section we
+introduce and welcome them in our Community!
+
+### Add synthetics and symbol information for semanticdb in Scala 3
+
+Student: **Rikito Taniguchi**
+
+Mentors: Tomasz Godzik, Chris Kipp, Jamie Thompson, Aleksander Boruch-Gruszecki
+
+SemanticDB is a data model for semantic information such as symbols and types in
+Scala programs. It is widely used for developing Scala's devtools such as
+scalafix and Metals. However, the SemanticDB extractor for Scala3 was a work in
+progress, and some features in devtools were unavailable for Scala3. This
+project focuses on enriching SemanticDB with additional information from the
+Scala3 compiler in order to improve the developer experience of Scala 3
+developers You can read more
+[here](https://github.com/tanishiking/gsoc-2021/blob/main/README.md)
+
+
+> Rikito's work enables a huge amount of features in tools used for working with
+> he Scala 3 code including Metals and Scalafix.  There is nothing currently that
+> think Rikito can improve as his work has been completely stellar.
+
+cit. Tomasz
+
+### Cross compiling “Shapeless 2” to Scala 3
+
+Student: **Katrix**
+
+Mentors:  Julien Richard-Foy, Aleksander Boruch-Gruszecki
+
+Shapeless is a crucial dependency of many popular Scala libraries. This project
+explores how the Scala 2 version of the library could be cross-built for Scala 3
+by porting some parts to Scala 3. It aims at helping library maintainers to
+adopt Scala 3 faster.  You can read more
+[here](https://github.com/milessabin/shapeless/pull/1200)
+
+> Congratulations for your work on Shapeless, especially for being so autonomous
+> in this project!
+
+cit. Julien
+
+### Implement support for ScalaPy in Scala 3
+
+Student: **Mykola Medynskyi**
+
+Mentors: Shadaj Laddad, Anatolii Kmetiuk
+
+ScalaPy is a library that enables Scala programs to use Python libraries. This
+project brings support for Scala 3 to the library to enable users to leverage
+all the new cool features that the new language versions ships while relying on
+powerful and well known Python libraries.  You can read more
+[here](https://gist.github.com/jlareck/7268918d28b0c6a0efebeafa11011e3c)
+
+> Mykola's contributions bringing support for Scala 3 are really impressive and
+> will enable many new research and production use cases in the future!
+
+cit. Shadaj
+
+A special thanks goes to **Zhendong Ang** who co-menthored Mykola and
+collaborated on the project for his semester project at EPFL.
+
+### A Python - Scala integrated environment with Almond, Ammonite and ScalaPy
+
+Mentors: Anatolii Kmetiuk, Alexandre Archambault
+
+ScalaPy is a library that enables Scala programs to use Python libraries. This
+project focuses on improving developer experience by simplifying the setup
+process, providing autocomplete functionalities in Almond and Ammonite,
+enriching the documentation and object displays.  You can read more
+[here](https://gist.github.com/kiendang/e6c2fc41448fabba6f1e6ae34cf65c49)
+
+> This work kick-started a better integration of the ScalaPy library in Scala
+> notebooks, making it easier to use Python libraries from there, and helping the
+> future prospects of both Scala notebooks and the use of Python libraries from
+> Scala.
+
+cit. Alexandre
+
+## Thank you, Mentors!
+
+Scala GSoC 2021 would not have been possible without our Mentors that dedicated
+their time and energy as volunteers to guide new contributors.  Thank you
+mentors for the great work. We hope to see you in the next edition(s)! 
+
+Here are a few of the comments that students submitted:
+
+> Both mentors are very helpful to me in this project and I learned a lot from
+> them (Hi Alex and Toli!)
+
+> Thank you so much Tomasz for mentoring me [..]  Thank you so much for helping me
+> with communication: pinging to reviewers, inviting Jamie to the call, and always
+> trying to move the project forward. I admire your communication skill. and thank
+> you so much Jamie for reviewing my Pull Requests!
+
+> Shadaj Laddad and Anatolii Kmetiuk are great mentors. Anatolii is incredibly
+> skilled in explanations. He perfectly explained in 30 minutes the basics of
+> metaprogramming in Scala which I could not understand for a month before it by
+> reading Scala docs and I am very thankful to him for this. Shadaj is an
+> excellent coordinator. He has a great vision of the whole project, possible
+> problems in it, and how to fix them. Also, his code reviews helped me to learn
+> how to make my code better and I am also very thankful to him. It is a pleasure
+> to work with them.
+
+We also want to thank our candidate Mentors who accepted the call of the Scala
+Center to propose interesting project ideas and who volunteered their time:
+
+ - Wojciech Mazur
+ - Sébastien Doeraene
+ - Adrien Piquerez
+ - Eric Loots
+ - Meriam Lachkar
+ - Dale Wijnand
+ - Fengyun Liu
+ - Lars Hupel
+ - Krzysztof Romanowski
+ - Mateusz Ziarko
+ - Felix Mulder
+ - Noel Welsh
+
+## How to get involved in Scala GSoC 2022
+
+Google has not disclosed information about the 2022 edition of GSoC yet. We can
+however learn from previous editions how to prepare for it and, if it follows
+the same general organization of 2021, the event might start **as soon as February
+2022, so it’s not too soon to start**. Here is how:
+
+###  For Open Source Project Maintainers
+
+First and foremost it is important to keep an updated list of project ideas:
+open source projects willing to be part of the GSoC should maintain GitHub
+issues, project boards or simple text files containing proposals for students.
+To make your project more approachable, offer projects with different levels of
+complexity and various topics.  You can find useful information about project
+proposals at
+https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/defining-a-project-ideas-list 
+
+You should also identify at least one mentor and one backup mentor for each
+proposal. This will speed up the application process but also make the project
+visible to students before the event starts, increasing the chances that
+motivated students will take the opportunity to work on your repository.
+
+Communication is fundamental too: candidate mentors are encouraged to
+communicate about their participation in GSoC and about project ideas throughout
+the year. Be responsive to students approaching you on the project
+channels (GitHub issues, Discord, Gitter, Twitter…).
+
+If you maintain a Scala library and would like to be part of Scala GSoC 2022
+with the help of the Scala Center, do not hesitate to contact us at
+[scala-gsoc@epfl.ch](mailto:scala-gsoc@epfl.ch)!
+
+### For Students
+
+If you are a student and want to be involved in Scala GSoC 2022, get in touch
+with the maintainers of the projects that you would like to contribute to. The
+GitHub repo or project site will contain information about communication media
+such as Discord, Gitter, Twitter or good-old email.
+
+Remember that most maintainers volunteer their free time for open source, so do
+not expect immediate replies. You can find some tips about making first contact
+at https://google.github.io/gsocguides/student/making-first-contact 
+
+You can also start to think about project proposals (you can find a lot of
+useful info at https://google.github.io/gsocguides/student/writing-a-proposal)
+and discuss them with project maintainers.
+
+Feel free to contact us at [scala-gsoc@epfl.ch](mailto:scala-gsoc@epfl.ch) if
+you get stuck along the way, we are happy to help within our capacities.
+
+## Even more: Brief history, stats, and goals
+
+The Scala organization has been involved in GSoC for many years thanks to the
+efforts of [Martin Odersky’s lab (called LAMP) at
+EPFL](https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lamp/): 
+
+![Student participations by year](/resources/img/blog/lamp-gsoc-students.png)
+
+In 2021 the Scala Center decided to
+revive this long tradition of successful projects (only 2 students in 9 editions
+did not complete their projects) with help of the maintainers of open source
+Scala libraries.
+
+For this year’s edition we gathered [28 project
+ideas](https://github.com/scalacenter/GoogleSummerOfCode2021) and 20 candidate
+mentors motivated to support students with such ideas.  We received 10
+applications and after reviewing proposals and assigning students to mentors, we
+retained 4 projects to enter the program.
+
+For the 2022 Scala GSoC edition, we are aiming to attract at least **10 new
+students** and we invite you to help us by 
+
+ - offering to be a mentor 
+ - letting us know if you have a student interested to participate 
+ - spreading the word!