I successfully finished my GSoC and I’m feeling extremely burnt out. The constant midnight coding and sleep deprivation always gets to you. I don’t really feel like programming for at least another fortnight. I’m currently doing what normal people do - hanging out on FB, TF2, and catching up with friends, movies and sitcoms.
GSoC was definitely the best thing which happened to me in the last half decade. I learnt about the various processes involved in successfully developing a software - collaboration across time zones, version control and bug triaging. I had hands-on experience on how developing works in the real world. You realize that developing software is less of writing totally new code using exotic languages and more of reading docs and implementing the code. I spent the majority of time reading docs and understanding code written by others. I spend a ridiculous amount of time figuring out what I did wrong and where. Some of my commits made it to the master repo and it makes me ecstatic to think that a few hundred people might use what I wrote.
That said, I would really like to thank ‘Jeff’ Fortin Tam, Luis De Bethencourt, Mathieu Duponchelle and the whole PiTiVi team.They were there 247 to help me out and answer my (looking back, retarded noob) doubts and were extremely patient and friendly. I did disappoint them. I fell behind schedule. Only towards the end I realized I hadn’t made it amply clear that I would have school throughout GSoC. Freshmen don’t get much of a summer vacation down here in India in Anna University. I fscked up royally.
It was definitely NO pleasure cruise. Many days, I stayed awake till 0230 and then woke up at 0700 for college. This also involves appearing perennially drunk in class, miraculously passing Circuit Theory ( I still have no clue how. I was SURE I would flunk), taking a quick nap during lunch break and the bus ride, drinking ridiculous amounts Coke and the like. Success isn’t sexy. Lets just say I traded my sleep, and a few grades which could have taken me to a “plushy job at TCS” for something waaay awesomer. Something which I would reminisce a decade from now :)
I guess I got my swagger back.
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