Yeayyyyyyy !

I got through GSoC .

This is fake excitement. Duh. I’m writing this 3 weeks after I got accepted. But yeah this is one thing I’m genuinely happy about. I’m very very happy about this. Maybe the only positive thing that happened to me this year.

Grades shitted. Summer applications rejected. Totally depressed college life. But this one shimmer changed everything. I was bursting with joy at the news.

Although since its facts I’m writing, I did had to prove my worth by passing a task given in 4 days during which I totally crashed two quizzes before my end-semester.Well that didn’t matter when Nancy broke the good news that I got accepted being a first timer.

and the work is exhilarating. Its with CERN-HSF. Whooooooo. who expected ? Although I primarily applied for this since I had a good base in programming in C and Python and I really now dont regret programming Python and data-analysis for passing time as it really helped in finishing that task in 4 days (no sleep-no eat style )

So that long history of programming kinda did present a gift I never expected.

> Learnt C++ in 8th but I just never went beyond OOP.(2011)
 
> Then Java in 10th. Atleast for getting a 100 in the ICSE paper ; Hated it.(2013)
 
> Python for fun in 12th.(2015)

> C never left. Again in  'Introduction to Computing 101' . through ended up with a **B**.(2016)


> Then first year summer project .Rotted with **PERL** and SVM. Oh wait. I actually liked PERL. It was cute and simple. Close to bash scripts.(2017)

> Then Data-science using **R** last semester. Arghh How much I hate R.(2019)

So over such a world-tour of programming languages I firmly got through the remaining lane with CS50Web with HTML5, CSS, SASS, Flask, Django, JS, and then finally ended up with MySQL.

After all this please curse me for making thisblog using Jekyll and Markdown . All because I don’t like WordPress Plugins and Blogger. Well it’s small but it is mine.

Why a blog this late ?

Well, the first 2 weeks into coding I was shocked. So Afraid. Intimidated . I hid under the bed and didn’t open my laptop. I was so afraid at the massive source code that CERN writes for their packages. I mean worst of all the source code was RAW. RAW like that RAW GREEN SOUR MANGO, and to top it all the cherry was bitter(the code had no documentation) I literally had to understand the source code through the comments and class-descriptions. It was a nightmare.

I wondered everyday they will throw me away. Sack me. Tell me “You can’t do it man “. I was that afraid. But my mentors are amazing ! Not just my mentors, the people who wrote this insane sources. I contacted them, and then after having that bitter source everyday, I mean I literally used to open up a class source code and stare at it doing nothing for 3 days. I got it slowly in.

And by the 3rd week. I was clear. I revised C++. Turns out I was afraid since I wrote C++ so long back I wasn't understanding newer code. Like `shared_ptr` and `map` classes . So a bit of hitting the `refresh button` is all I needed. patience is all I needed

---

and ?

as of yesterday I gulped down all that bitter code in a go and I wrote lines and lines of code. It flows now…like words out of a bestseller author. Now I’m confident. Clear. I understand the code. Atleast I’m not afraid anymore.

It is hard. Honestly this is great task, I’m excited. And after all that realization about procrastination, I’m not really afraid of this challenge. My Mentors are great. They are always there for me .

… and I have my secret weapons - StackExchange and VSCode; BOOh ! I’m not afraid anymore.

...and that's why the post today.

Disclaimer : The GSOC logo is copyright of Google ; the CERN-HSF logo is copyright of CERN-HSF and not owned by the author.