From Gaming to Coding: My Journey to Google Summer of Code 2025

My Tech Journey

Hi everyone! I’m Ansuman Sahoo, a Computer Science sophomore at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. Technology has always fascinated me since childhood, and my interest grew even stronger through gaming. During my freshman year, I tried various technologies to find what clicked with me. I started with Android app development but soon got bored, partly because the development-debugging cycle was too slow (and my computer struggled with the resource-heavy Android Studio). At those times, I was also exploring the world of open source and learning how contributing to it could transform someone’s career and skills while connecting them with amazing people around the world. This led me to try frontend web development using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I enjoyed the fast and responsive development cycle, but something still felt missing. Having learned Java in high school, where we built command-line interface (CLI) projects, I had developed a soft spot for CLI applications. When I finally tried backend development with Go in 2024, everything clicked! I fell in love with how fast and concise Go is.

My GSoC Journey

Last year, my Google Summer of Code proposal was rejected. Looking back, I think it had to do with my limited experience with Go and project building. Over the past year, I’ve dedicated myself to mastering the language and contributing to open source projects. Now, I’m thrilled to share that I’ve been selected as a Google Summer of Code contributor for 2025! I’ll be working with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) on their Lima sandbox project.

The Lima Project

Lima (which stands for “LInux MAchines”) is a tool that helps run Linux Virtual Machines on MacOS and other hosts, similar to WSL2. It focuses on running containers with automatic file sharing and port forwarding. Currently, Lima’s internal virtual machine backend drivers are tightly coupled with the main binary. This makes the code hard to maintain and clutters the main program. It also creates challenges when trying to integrate other virtual machine backends. My project aims to create a plugin system or framework that will support various virtual machine backends. These can either connect with the main Lima application over gRPC or be compiled directly into the main binary.

What’s Next?

I’ve already broken down my implementation plan into smaller tasks and created GitHub issues to help me work independently. My mentor Akihiro suggested creating a large draft pull request (not for merging, just for preview) where I can add multiple commits. Later, I can create individual smaller pull requests by cherry-picking from this draft pull request. This week I also have my first meeting scheduled with my mentors, Akihiro and Anders, and I’m hoping it goes well! This is my first time working on such a significant project, and I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity. I hope to complete it successfully and share my journey through biweekly blog posts!

I want to thank my mentors for believing in me and choosing me as a contributor to this GSoC project🙏🏻