Google Summer of Code 24 -Phase 1 (Experience and Learnings)

Participating in Google Summer of Code has been wonderful , it has given me the opportunity to work on a real world project. I am contributing to The Virtual Brain project of INCF organization. I will share what challenges I faced and what I learnt through Google Summer of Code.

My project revolves around translating The Virtual Brain's features as widgets for Jupyter lab.

Things I learnt through Google Summer of Code-

• Practically many things, its my first introduction to so many concepts.

• I got to know about agile project management , scrum and sprints, and Jira.

• I got to learn more about git, github and version controlling.

• I got to contribute to a very cool project - The Virtual Brain , its so exciting, I didn't thought that working for neuroscience and particularly a brain simulating tool will be my first real world project 😅, it feels cool.

• I got to know about neuroscience topics which was very cool and interesting.

• It definitely expanded my knowledge of Jupyter ecosystem, interactive data visualizations, 3d graphics.

• Also, it made me realize the usefulness of chatgpt😅 and AI tools. I used it like an assistant. For instance , instead of manually finding the color codes of an image, I just prompted the image to chatgpt, it gave me all the color codes in that image.

• Apart from technical skills, it also helped improving my communication skills , although its still journey for me .

Challenges that I faced-

• First off before even starting the project, I got my SSD damaged and many of my files got lost , through which I learnt to keep backup of my data.

• I faced many challenges during implementing the features but things that things that seemed advanced and challenging at first began to fall into place after spending some time and trying different approaches.

• I also found it difficult to stay motivated when the excited part was over like when I had to write tests or structuring the code🥲.However I realized the importance of these tasks and managed to push through.

• I realized my communication skills need improvement .I need to work on my language, vocabulary, and confidence.

• In the beginning, I was reluctant to reach out but I have overcome this now😀. I got to understand the gaps in communication and tried improving them.

Overall it has been a great learning experience and I am really grateful to my mentors and other team members , they have been really supportive, understanding and just awesome. Here is my github profile, in case you want to look at my work .