[SoC] Student Applications

[bryce at kampjes.demon.co.uk]

It really helps if your application looks at what is required for
the project and also provides some detail on why you have, or could
quickly learn, the required skills.

This really matters if you're not in the same town as the mentors
or haven't been visible inside the Squeak community. If you don't
personally know the mentors or haven't got a record of contributions
unfortunately we'll have to judge on what you tell us rather than
what you can actually do. It helps if you can provide some verifiable
proof of what you're saying. If it's an Exupery project and you're new
to Smalltalk some low-level code is useful even if it's not directly
relevant.

Any involvement with open source development would help. If you've
done something for another project tell us, and provide links to some
discussions in the mailing list you were involved with. Being able to
work via electronic communication will be essential, involvement
elsewhere demonstrates this.

The key skills for Exupery are:
    * Test Driven Development - tests are a required part of the
      process
    * Smalltalk development (Exupery is written in Smalltalk)
    * Assembly, and possibly machine code (it's what's generated)
    * Debugging C and assembly 
    * Slang (the language the VM is written in)
    * Smalltalk implementation

I doubt that any student will have all of them. Learning is a key goal
for this kind of project. The tests will help, we'll plan all Exupery
projects so that they're deliverable in small pieces test by test.


Also Squeak doesn't keep it's source in files. If you're going to
suggest what resources you're going to use just say you'll use the
standard community tools. SourceForge is not a good choice for Squeak
version control.

Bryce