GSoC 2023 Organization Application

Why does your org want to participate in Google Summer of Code?

Fortran is a mature technology that excels at high-performance and parallel computing for science and engineering. However, it lacks modern tooling and a rich ecosystem of packages that are common in newer languages. Fortran-lang is a young open-source community with the goal to unite Fortran programmers around the world and provide modern infrastructure for the language. It is growing fast both in terms of projects and the number and activity of contributors. Participating in GSoC would offer a unique opportunity for students to engage in Fortran-lang at an early stage when paths forward are not yet paved and there is flexibility to how the projects can evolve. By contributing to Fortran-lang projects, participants will work directly to improve the Fortran user experience and the ecosystem of tools and libraries and help improve Fortran as a whole. They will also work closely with the core developers, established scientists, book authors, and members of the Fortran Standards Committee.

What would your organization consider to be a successful GSoC program?

The participants would complete their chosen projects, and improve their Fortran programming skills, modern software practices, and interaction with open-source communities. They remain actively engaged and develop relationships with the core developers and the broader community. Ideally, they will propose new development paths beyond their specific projects and continue participating in Fortran-lang afterward. For Fortran-lang, it would mean receiving many student applications and growing as a community.

How will you keep mentors engaged with their GSoC contributors?

All potential mentors and administrators in Fortran-lang are its founding members and/or active core contributors to one or more projects. We work closely together and communicate on a daily basis by email, GitHub, video calls, and Discourse. This ensures tight communication loops and the participants will be entrained in these channels. We plan to have dedicated weekly video calls for participants, mentors, and administrators, during which we will review progress and any current issues that need to be resolved. We will maintain dedicated GitHub Project trackers and Discourse threads to keep track of the progress of each participant and project.

How will you help your GSoC contributors stay on schedule to complete their projects?

We will set general milestones for the project, which we will keep track of using GitHub projects and issues. While these milestones will help the students maintain the pace, we understand that we will run into unforeseen challenges and may need to adjust the milestones. We will nurture open and clear communication and encourage students to discuss any issues, in private with mentors and in public alike. We will also encourage students to write a weekly blog post which we will feature on our website. They will use it to document their progress and solicit feedback from the rest of the community. While not all students may feel comfortable writing a public blog, we will help them work through the discomfort and encourage them to work openly. It will help students flesh out their thoughts, clarify the problems they are solving, and build an audience of readers. Likewise, it will help the mentors and the broader community stay up-to-date with the progress and provide feedback.

How will you get your GSoC contributors involved in your community during GSoC?

Besides the weekly calls dedicated to GSoC contributors, mentors, and administrators, we will entrain the students in our monthly video calls in which we discuss the current topics of development and any immediate issues to be resolved. We will also encourage the students to participate in general discussions on the Fortran Discourse, open issues with ideas and proposals, and review existing Pull Requests unrelated to their chosen projects. We will distribute and promote students' weekly blog posts on our website and Twitter and help solicit feedback from the broader community.

Anything else we should know (Optional)

Our organization participated in the GSoC 2021 program, which was our first year. We had five students, out of which all five we deemed successful projects. Out of the five students, four continue to be actively engaged in the community.

GSoC reference contact

SymPy; Ondřej Čertík, the admin for Fortran-lang has been an admin for SymPy for 14 years.

Is your organization part of any government?

No.