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Subject: Re: [boost] A possible GSOC 2011 proposal idea
From: Joel de Guzman (joel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-03-21 00:29:11


On 3/21/2011 1:03 PM, Robert Ramey wrote:
> Andrew Sutton wrote:
>>>> If the community is interested in such a project, I have a
>>>> minimalistic LP solver already written. I just need to "boostify" it
>>>> and I'll upload within the next week.
>>>
>>> I think you're underestimating the effort required to produce an LP
>>> library which would be considered acceptable to boost by two
>>> orders of magnitude.
>>
>> In 3 moths? Absolutely! But I'm not terribly worried about that. If
>> Chad good submits a proposal with reasonable goals, I'd be more than
>> happy to fund the proposal.
>
> Hmmm- two orders of magnitude = 100 so I was saying that that such
> a job would be 100 weeks. My real point is that to be accepted into boost,
> a library pretty much has to be demonstrably better than any
> opensource/openlicense
> alternative. I'm not making a judgment on this, it's just the way that I
> see the review
> process working.
>
> Also, "toy implementations" (with few, if any, exceptions) have not
> passed the boost review process either. When something is submitted
> it is compared to all the alternatives and criticised according to the needs
> of a wide variety of applications so if it's not complete and very
> robust it doesn't get accepted.
>
> Then there is a huge amount of work including build, test and documentation.
>
> Finally, I think that numerical analysis issues such as near singular basis
> matrices, cycling, accumulated error and periodic re-inversion etc, etc
> are not issues that can be addressed satisfactorily in a couple of weeks
> for a library which would hope to reach the level that boost users
> expect and demand. I would say this is true even if the scope were
> confined to a simplex method implemenatation. Including mixed integer
> problems would be a whole 'nother level. To do this right really is
> a very big job.
>
> I should note that many (most) of the GSOC proposals
> have failed to enter boost because the effort was way underestimated.
>
> Of course, if anyone want's to take a shot, go ahead - it's a free
> country.

I agree with Robert. One of the best GSOC project, IMHO, is the Fusion
project by Thomas Heller. As his mentor, I have to say that he has
exceeded my expectation by 'ten orders of magnitude' :-) His work
went beyond the GSOC time and until now and the future to come,
he's totally devoted to the project and has become a full fledged
author/maintainer. At the start, I had to make it clear that Thomas
should expect more than GSOC's time frame and make him commit further
beyond in order to fully satisfy the goals of the project --no less
than what's expected of a Boost library in terms of quality. One year
after GSOC 2010 and Thomas is still going strong.

Bottom line: I think a key to a successful GSOC project is commitment
by the student to go beyond the GSOC time frame.

Regards,

-- 
Joel de Guzman
http://www.boostpro.com
http://boost-spirit.com

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