Outreachy round 16 | Applying to Debian

Hi, Andreas. Hi, Molly.

I am Rupal Jain, a 3rd-year undergrad studying at IIIT Delhi, India. I am majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Computational Biology. I am applying to Outreachy 2018 round 16. I am particularly interested in the "Quality assurance for biological applications inside Debian project".

A little background of mine:

I have been into programming since class 11th. Have been coding primarily in C, C++. Also, have done projects in and have a good understanding of Matlab, Python, and Java. I am a decent and confident coder having written decently complex codes since my college days. I have a fair understanding of Operating Systems, and strong in data structures and algorithms, and their analysis and design. I'm a newbie to the world of open source. which is the prime reason why I'm applying to Outreachy i.e to get a head-start.

And so that FOSS doesn't sound alien to me anymore. :P

The prime reason as to why I am interested in Bioinformatics project inside Debian is that, I am Computational Biology enthusiast. I have been involved in the field since past one year and have done/doing relevant courses at my institute and doing projects in them.

Relevant courses I took/taking: Quantitative Biology, Computational Neuroscience, Chemoinformatics, Network Biology, Network Science. Alongside, I am also doing research projects in these domains as a part of my courses.

Self-learning: Mathematical models in Biology. Studying it by myself as I'm fascinated with the mathematical logic and aspect behind most of the things I study.

Due to this exposure, I could resonate so well with this project under Debian. And, I am excited to learn about bioinformatics from a whole new aspect with Debian.

In addition to just sounding cool, the work looks challenging too. Being a total beginner to Debian packaging or concepts along this line, the project surely has a good learning curve for me.

So, I'll just list the things I have gone through and am aware of and other trivial stuff and what question I have:

1. First and foremost, I have subscribed to your mailing list (have also cc'ed it here as I have read that you guys prefer to keep most of your conversations public, which does make sense to me).

2. I went through the archived conversations through the mailing lists for GSoC/Outreachy program to know what questions did past applicants have, what you answered them and also, to see whether there are already many potential applicants for this project and whether you have finalized one of them to be an intern, etc.

3. I have gone through this policy document as I saw that you have redirected many individuals to this document as an essential reading. I got to know about Debian Pure Blend, motivation and aim of the "Debian Med project", and also reading like, "Developers reference" and "New Maintainers guide", although I couldn't understand the technical portion too well.

4. I also came across the MoM program here, I want to be a part of it and in the process of learning Debian packaging during MoM, I can also make appropriate contributions to the project for Outreachy.

5. On this tasks page, it shows a whole list of Debian Med packages, so is there a particular package on which I will be working on in the beginning or is it still to be decided? Because based on names of meta packages, I feel more interested in some packages more than other (broad fascination with themes), but I'm sure you'll know it better that which one I should be working on.

6. Is this the right link for me to head towards setting up Debian environment?

I have just looked up to the internet to know what do we mean by packaging in Debian, to get a gist of what is there to be done, but this gave me a very broad view/glimpse of what it means, but only theoretically. But to get into actual coding and building packages and understanding the workflow, without which there wouldn't be much of a point to go on solving bugs, I'll need help (as a beginner would do). Like MoM program, maybe.

I am not sure if I am late in contacting you as the deadline is 22nd March for submitting contributions. Although, the contributions we make after that (till the results are announced) might also be counted.

Let me know what you think.

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Thanks and regards
Rupal Jain
2015081
CSE undergrad(3rd year) | IIITD‌