Stream: Google Code-in

Topic: About GCI

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 15:57):

Should I complete a lot of tasks?
It's been 4 days since I started GCI and I have completed only 2 tasks. I see people on leader board, How much tasks they've completed? Should I complete as many tasks as I can?

Armin (LordOfBikes) (Dec 03 2017 at 16:01):

@Naseef if you want to reach top 10, to get a change of grand price winner, you should do this. But don't ignore quality.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 16:03):

Does number of completed tasks completed count when choosing finalists?

Armin (LordOfBikes) (Dec 03 2017 at 16:04):

Not only, also the quality of the tasks!

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 16:05):

I can code, But haven't done any coding task yet. Finished 2 design task.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 16:06):

(deleted)

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 16:09):

How many tasks does it usually take to be in the top 5-10?

Armin (LordOfBikes) (Dec 03 2017 at 16:11):

Iirc, the top 10 candidates last year finished about 30-40 tasks. There is still enough time for that. It's up to you, what you prefer, designing or coding. You can also mix them at your pleasure. Maybe coding tasks take more time than designing, so a good mix may be the best recipe.

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 16:15):

Oh yikes, that's quite a lot.

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 16:17):

mahdi, you just want to make sure you're in the top-10 (i.e., you're listed on https://codein.withgoogle.com/organizations/brl-cad/

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 16:18):

from there, it's all about cumulative quality, value, impact

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 16:20):

if the #10 ranked person had 20 tasks for example, but all absolutely top-notch, top-priority; and the #1 guy had 40 tasks, but all of them were rushed and easy -- guess who would get picked as the winner

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 16:20):

Oh, I didn't even know the ranking feature existed -- is that new?

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 16:20):

so you want enough quantity that you make the list, but beyond that you really want to focus on doing quality work

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 16:21):

it is and I don't think it's being told to people yet (oops)

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 16:21):

Lol, the number of completed tasks might be exploited by some competitors in upcoming years. Also, speaking of improving quality I took some time to redo the Splash Screen design. Is it any better?

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 16:23):

SplashScreenLite2.png

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 16:23):

This is the version I'm using for the QT tasks but the .psd would allow someone to change the title easily.

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 16:25):

love it, though you'd have to cite the source of that archer dude

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 16:25):

Indeed I have.

Amritpal Singh (Dec 03 2017 at 16:29):

Splash screen looks impressive.

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 16:31):

Thank you! The feedback I received from the mentors helped me come up a better design.

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 16:34):

Do you guys know how the leaderboard is structured? Some organizations don't have any leaders which leads me to question how an algorithm could be picking them.

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 16:37):

don't know, probably have to have a minimum # of non-beginner tasks

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:41):

Is it okay abandon a task for a second time?

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:42):

sure you can come back to it later

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:42):

I'd like to do another task while I build BRL-CAD

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:42):

go for it

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:42):

maybe leave a comment so the mentors know

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:44):

I'd like to do the 'Alternative GUI' set of task. It sounds cool for me.

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:45):

those are priority tasks too

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:45):

which one you leaving?

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:45):

The Appleseed tasks.

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:45):

ah, so swapping priority for priority :)

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:45):

I'll come back to it in a hour.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:46):

I'd like to do the both. I have 45 days.

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:46):

that's more than enough time -- each task is nominally 2-4 hours of work if everything goes right and you know everything you need to know

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:50):

as you get fully set up and gain experience, tasks will take a LOT less time than they're taking here at the beginning

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:50):

The time is actually fixing build erros :)

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:51):

I have Qt 4, should I use Qt5?

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:51):

building appleseed requires 4

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:51):

there's no reason, however, for new development to use anything but the latest

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:52):

Got it, Going for Qt5

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 17:53):

I thought there is some existing code which use a specific Qt version, Sound like it's a new development.

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 17:53):

there is existing code that uses Qt -- so it depends on the task

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 18:03):

"Use CMake for the creation of the build environment ..."
Why not QMake?

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 18:03):

qmake is specific to Qt

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 18:03):

cmake is generalized to anything

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 18:04):

cmake is what most projects use

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 18:04):

Yea, This is a Qt task

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 18:04):

but it's a task that we'll be integrating with other work if it's to be of any future use

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 18:04):

Okay...

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 18:07):

more commentary here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34370088/what-are-the-differences-and-similarities-between-cmake-and-qmake

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 18:08):

Hmm.. Yeah, I kinda knew a little about QMake already.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 18:10):

I've been reading exact same thing :D

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 18:10):

a while a go.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 20:21):

I've finished the code a long while ago, It works perfectly when configured with qmake.
TBH I have to learn a lot about CMake.

Sean (Dec 03 2017 at 20:29):

it's VERY similar, identical in some respects. syntax should pretty much directly translate. maybe try looking up a simple cmake tutorial / example.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 20:30):

That's what I'm doing :)

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 20:31):

In order obtain enough knowledge to complete this task, I need at least a few hours

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 20:54):

Lol, same; going into the projects I had very little idea of what CMake was but now I'm really glad I got to learn about it. CMake is incredibly powerful and learning how to use it efficiently would make someone a much better developer. That being said, I think it's going to take a couple of weeks before I fully understand how CMake functions. Good luck to both of us though :D

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 20:55):

Goodluck!

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 20:57):

(deleted)

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 20:58):

Yeah, I used it as a dummy to test some of the zulip features but unfortunately forgot the account information.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:04):

I'm working on Qt design 1, What's you're working on?

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:05):

I'm working on QT design 4 :P @Naseef

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:05):

Do you use Qt Creator?

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:06):

Well, I'm using QT Creator as an IDE because of its sweet correction features but I compile with Visual Studio

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:07):

One of the mentors mentioned that you can't use the MinGW compiler so be warned of that

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:07):

That's nice.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:07):

I'm on Ubuntu so I got GCC! :wink:

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:08):

Touche :wink:

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:08):

Are there any other tasks you've worked on?

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:09):

I've done 2 for now

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:09):

Animation task and Splash Screen

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:09):

Animation is a beginner task for another Org

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:10):

And you?

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:11):

I'm currently on my 9th; I'm planning on continuing these QT tasks even though they take longer than the others.

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:12):

I've only done tasks for BRL-CAD

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:12):

That's nice and so fast!

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:14):

Well, considering how the top 10 usually have 30+ tasks that's probably not a lot.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:14):

But well, It's been just 5 days

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:16):

I'm still figuring out what is GCI :D

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:18):

All I know is that it's a cool way to have some fun coding and learning :P I can understand the appeal of open source development now.

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:20):

I liked the idea of Open Source since I heard about it for the first time. I didn't knew how I can contribute to open source development. GCI is helping me a lot to learn about open source.

Mahdi (Dec 03 2017 at 21:23):

That's pretty sweet. Have you ever worked with QT before?

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:26):

No

Naseef (Dec 03 2017 at 21:26):

But I've worked with GTK

Mitesh (Dec 04 2017 at 08:02):

hi everyone...
anyone started with appleseed

Naseef (Dec 04 2017 at 10:44):

Yea, Me!

Naseef (Dec 04 2017 at 14:32):

Aren't "[SETUP FOR CODERS] Compile and Install BRL-CAD" and "Compile BRL-CAD from source on your computer" just the same task? I don't see much differences.

Sean (Dec 04 2017 at 14:45):

one is a beginner task, one is not

Sean (Dec 04 2017 at 14:46):

you should only claim one of them

Naseef (Dec 04 2017 at 15:38):

Claimed the non-beginner one.

Sean (Dec 04 2017 at 16:20):

that's good -- that was intentional, so people could choose which beginner tasks to do, or if they started with installation and modeling tasks, they could still be mentored through compilation setup

Naseef (Dec 11 2017 at 00:32):

My exams start tomorrow, I have to focus on studying for the exam. So I can't do time-consuming coding tasks for about a week or so. I'm going to do modelling tasks until the exam ends, and then I can get back to my favorite coding tasks.

Mahdi (Dec 11 2017 at 01:41):

I suppose we're in the same situation: I also have a lot of work to do this week so I probably won't be able to get much done. The most difficult part about this contest is probably having to balance your school activities with the time to complete a task.

Naseef (Dec 11 2017 at 02:13):

Time to complete task isn't very bad, You get at least 3 days to complete a task, IMO not bad at all.
But for coding tasks, I have to spend all day on writing the code, solving CMake problems, Making my code readable, And learning CMake and Qt as I do the task (never used any of those before).

Naseef (Jan 11 2018 at 10:03):

We're on the last week of GCI!

Siddharth (Jan 12 2018 at 12:54):

Yeah :sweat_smile:

Sean (Jan 12 2018 at 16:53):

yeah :(

Jeff Sieu (Jan 13 2018 at 03:44):

:disappointed:

Naseef (Jan 13 2018 at 09:36):

I have only done 1 beginner task. Should I do another one? (Beginner tasks aren't interesting)

Rahil Malik (Jan 13 2018 at 09:40):

they are probably not compulsory

Naseef (Jan 15 2018 at 17:05):

Are people allowed to visit Googleplex?

Siddharth (Jan 16 2018 at 18:47):

Yeah

Sean (Jan 17 2018 at 15:19):

you generally need an invite or you won't get to see or do much

Sean (Jan 17 2018 at 15:20):

can't go into any of the buildings, for example, without a visitor pass .. and that visitor pass requires a googler

Naseef (Jan 17 2018 at 15:20):

Yeah, I Googled that. I read that we can't enter the interior without an employee of google showing us around (maybe a friend or relative).

Sean (Jan 17 2018 at 15:22):

the grand prize winners will obviously be invited and shown around by googlers

Sean (Jan 17 2018 at 15:23):

among other fun activities

Siddharth (Jan 21 2018 at 18:26):

That'll be exciting

Rahil Malik (Jan 22 2018 at 10:33):

Miss receiving mails from GCI

Naseef (Jan 22 2018 at 11:16):

There are lot of unread emails from GCI in my inbox. Why I have to read email notifications when I check my dashboard every hour?

Last updated: Jan 10 2025 at 00:48 UTC