Hi folks. In two days Google Code-in is going to end. Now is a good time to look back and reflect upon what I learned and achieved through this event. In this post I will try to share my experience regarding Google Code-in and especially FOSSASIA (this is the organization which I worked with).

This was/is my first Code-in. I didn’t have any experience before so I was not sure what to expect. I was not aware of how this competition will turn out and what the organization/mentors’ behaviors will be. Well, I am more than happy to say that this competition fulfilled all my expectations and I thoroughly enjoyed it. What made it more enjoyable was the organization and mentors which I worked with!

What is the most important thing you learned in the contest?

I learned about team-work and that I am not the only talented young programmer. I learned that in order to succeed you need to do team-work. You need to take help from others and you need to delegate some of your tasks. This was the hardest lesson for me. I am not accustomed to sharing my work with anyone but this competition taught me the importance of sharing.

What was your favorite task?

There were actually a couple of them. Firstly, I loved the Django task (Making a personal website). Then there were these NodeJs (the only real dev language :P) tasks, in particular the GitHub OAuth task. These were my favorite because they were big and required the students to spend a bit-more-than-usual time to complete these projects.

What could FOSSASIA mentors do in future contests to make them better?

There are quite a few things they can do. Firstly, they can make themselves available in the IRC. Currently only a few of the mentors can be seen lurking around in the IRC whereas most of the active members of the #fossasia IRC channel are the students. Being available on the IRC enables the students to get quick responses from the mentors.

What are your plans regarding involvement with FOSSASIA and open source in future?

I have always been an Open Source fan. As a matter of fact I even released my book under CC license which is also available on GitHub.

My plan is to continue my involvement with FOSSASIA and Open Source development as long as I can. I will try to continue contributing to the projects of FOSSASIA and even try to become a mentor from this organization in the next GCI.

Through this competition I got an opportunity to make some nice friends from all over the world. In particular, I met Jason Wong and Yathannsh Kulshrestha. I was able to immediately connect/relate with both of these individuals. I hope to continue these friendships after GCI as well. It is not common that you meet awesome individuals on the Internet.

I also met some awesome mentors along the way. A few of them are:

• Jigyasa Grover
• Sudheesh Singanamalla
• Manan Wason
• Mario Behling
• Aruna Herath
• Michael Peter Christen

There were a lot of other amazing mentors as well who made this installment of GCI the best it could ever be. The above listed mentors are those with whom I worked the most.

If you are 13-17 years old then I would like to urge you to give Google Code-In a try. If you end up participating in it then opt for FOSSASIA. This organization is full of amazing mentors who are always available to guide you and help you as much as they possibly can.