Google Code-In 2012 Haiku Wrap Up Report

Haiku participated in Google’s Code-In for the third year in a row. This year’s event was a bit different than in 2010 and 2011. Google changed the rules a bit to make the contest better than in previous years. One of the changes was to remove the translation tasks as it seems for many of these tasks students were using Google Translator and other such tools. This meant that the biggest category for Haiku in GCI2010 and 2011 was gone, so we would have to adjust things a bit. For 2012 we had students complete 168 tasks, with ten students completing six or more tasks each. We focused more on coding and coding related tasks than in the past.

We had a few stand out students, who we will talk more about in a future post, since we aren’t allowed to tip off who the winners are until February 4th when they are announced by Google. One of the other changes was that each org got to pick 2 grand prize winners out of the 5 students who completed the most tasks for that org. So this means that 2 of the 20 grand prize winners will be students who completed tasks for Haiku.

Among the various tasks that were completed this year were some how-to videos, some improvements to StyledEdit, Bluetooth, fixing a handful of Haiku trac tickets, writing 50+ bep files for Haikuporter, and lots more. The mentors and I still need to sort through some of the closed tasks and get the work applied to Haiku and HaikuPorts. You’ll find the 4 videos posted here: http://files.haiku-os.org/files/media/

I’d like to thank this year’s 17 mentors and all 37 of the students who completed tasks for Haiku, and also Stephanie Taylor and the folks at Google for holding Code-In again this year. It was another fun and exciting Code-In.