FOSSASIA at Google Code-In 2016 Grand Prize Trip

This year FOSSASIA came up with a whopping number of GCI participants, making it to the top. FOSSASIA is a mentor organization at the Google Code-In contest, which introduces pre-university students towards open source development.

Every year Google conducts the grand prize trip to all the GCI winners and I represented FOSSASIA as a mentor.

FOSSASIA GCI winners and Mentor at Google Mountain View Campus.

Day 1: Meet and Greet with the Diverse Communities

We all headed towards the San Francisco Google office and had a great time interacting with members from diverse open source organizations from different parts of the world. I had some interactive conversations with the kids, on how they scheduled their sleep hours in order to complete the task and got feedback from the mentors from different time zones! I was also overwhelmed while listening to their interests apart from open source contributions.

“I am a science enthusiast, mainly interested in Computer Science and its wide range of applications. I also enjoy playing the piano, reading, moving, and having engaging conversations with my friends. As a participant in the GCI contest, I got the chance to learn by doing, I got an insight of how it is like to work on a real open-source project, met some great people, helped others (and received help myself). Shortly, it was amazing, and I’m proud to have been a part of it. ” Shared by one of our Winner Oana Rosca.

There were people from almost 14 different countries, in fact, FOSSASIA, as a team, was the most diverse group 🙂

Day 2: Award Ceremony

We had two winners from FOSSASIA, Arkhan Kaiser from Indonesia and Oana Rosca from Romania. There were 8 organizations with 16 winners. The award ceremony was celebrated on day 2 and each winner was felicitated by Chris DiBona, the director of the Google open source team.

Talks by Googlers

We had amazing speakers from Google who spoke about their work, experiences, and journey to Google. Our first speaker was Jeremy Allison, a notable contributor to “Samba” which is a free software re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. He spoke on “How the Internet works” and gave a deeper view of the internet magic.

We had various speakers from different domains such as Grant Grundler from the Chrome team, Lyman Missimer from Google Expeditions, Katie Dektar from the Making and Science team, Sean Lip from Oppia(Googler and Oppia org admin), Timothy Papandreou from Waymo and Andrew Selle from TensorFlow.

Day 3: Fun Activities

We had various fun activities organized by the Google team. I had a great time cruising towards the Alcatraz island.  Later we had a walk on the Golden Gate bridge. Here comes the fun part of the tour “the cruise dinner” which was the best part of the day.

Day 4: End of the trip

Oana, Arkhan and I gave a nice presentation about our work during GCI. We spoke about all the amazing projects under FOSSASIA. One cool thing we did is that we “Doodled” our presentation 🙂 Here are few images from the actual presentation.

The day ended well with loads of good memories and information. Thanks to the open source technologies and their availability along with a beautiful friendly community, these memories and connections will now remain for a lifetime.

Continue ReadingFOSSASIA at Google Code-In 2016 Grand Prize Trip

FOSSASIA Code-In Grand Prize Winners Gathering at Google Headquarter

FOSSASIA was thrilled to be selected once again as a mentor organisation of Google Code-In (GCI) 2015 – a contest to introduce pre-university students (ages 13-17) to open source software development. Together with 13 other orgs we reached out to 980 students from 65 countries completed a total number of 4,776 tasks. As a part of our participation, I got a chance to present FOSSASIA at the Grand Prize Winners trip.

FOSSASIA Team, photo by Jeremy Allison
FOSSASIA Team, photo by Jeremy Allison

GCI 2015 Awards Ceremony

28 grand prize winners, their parents along with one mentor from each participating organisation were invited to a trip to the Bay Area as a reward to their hard work during the last GCI program. Students had a chance to meet with mentors and to interact with their fellow students from other projects, enjoyed a few days in San Francisco and received many cool gifts/swags from Google.

Chris DiBona and Jason Wong, photo by Jeremy Allision
Chris DiBona and Jason Wong, photo by Jeremy Allision

Chris DiBona – Director of Open Source at Google – a super busy man who was so kind to spend his morning personally congratulated each single student in front of his/her parent. I do believe enjoy what you are doing and get recognition for your work is the best gift ever and to be able to share it with your family is even better. Thanks Google for celebrating the open source culture.

Meet, learn and share

I was very impressed by the level of knowledge and abilities of all the 28 students. They are young, enthusiastic and inspiring. Thanks to all the parents for believing and supporting the kids in pursuing their open source journey.

Group photo by Jeremy Allison
Group photo by Jeremy Allison

It was wonderful to meet our two FOSSASIA GCI students for the first time. Jason grew up in the States, seemed a bit reserved while Yathannsh from India was very outspoken. They both were very new to open source when they joined the program and now have become active contributors and very eager to learn more. Three of us had a team presentation on FOSSASIA labs and our achievement from GCI 2015. Jason expressed his wish to go on as a mentor for the next GCI.

Jason and Yathannsh
Jason and Yathannsh

I had several interesting conversations with the parents who finally understood why their kids were on the computers all the time. About 14% of the parents are working in IT and very aware of open technology. The rest was super excited to learn about various open source projects. Many said to me they would love to have their second son/daughter to join the program as well.

The mentor group had a few discussions on pros and cons, how to improve and maximize the outcome of the program, and ways to keep students engaging afterwards. I learned a lot from other orgs and also shared FOSSASIA workflow and guidelines with them. The 7 weeks of GCI was an amazing experience for me and my team. I must give our FOSSASIA mentors credit for their incredible efforts. It was truly a pleasure to work with Mario, Sean, Mohit, Praveen, Nikunj, Abhishek, Jigyasa, Dukeleto, Manan, Saptaks, Aruna, Rohit, Arnav, Diwanshi, Martin, Nicco, Sudheesh, Samarjeet, Harsh, Luther, Jung and many more.

mentors
GCI 2015 – 14 Org Mentors, photo by Jeremy Allison

The Fun

It was the best field trip ever! The program was carefully planned: Meeting with Google engineers, a tour of the Google campus, a day of sightseeing around San Francisco and much more.

Segway Tour

I was my first time on a Segway and I loved it, so cool! Thanks Stephanie for encouraging me to try this. It is never too late to learn something.

Segway by the bay
Segway by the bay

Afternoon walk over the Golden Gate Bridge

Sanya and I could have completed the entire bridge but.. because of our slow male mentors we only made it halfway through. To all my geek friends out there – Please do more exercises!

On Golden Gate Bridge
On Golden Gate Bridge
Walking on the bridge, photo by Florian Schmidt
Walking on the bridge, photo by Florian Schmidt

Yacht Dinner Cruise

This was the highlight for many of us: sailing along the bay, relaxing time on the water, beautiful landscape, nice chats and yummy food.

Photo by Jeremy Allison
Photo by Jeremy Allison
Ladies pose, photo by Jeremy Allison
Ladies pose, photo by Jeremy Allison
with Cat Allman, photo by Jeremy Allison
with Cat Allman, photo by Jeremy Allison

Thank you organisers!

We just couldn’t thank Stephanie enough for her hard work and the extreme energy not only to GCI but also to the whole open source community and especially her care for us all during our trip. I was amazed by the level of details that been brought in: additional medication, sunscreen, chocolate tips, gift card, travel guide, luggage storage, special diet etc.

Stephanie Taylor, GCI program manager, photo by Jeremy Allison
Stephanie Taylor, GCI program manager, photo by Jeremy Allison

Last but not least thank to the lovely Mary, kind Helen, cool Eric, friendly Josh, awesome photographer Jeremy and of course my favorite Cat Allman for another unforgettable experience!

Links

Photos: https://goo.gl/photos/htCKY4yJooX9ZSNBA

Google Code-In: developers.google.com/open-source/gci/

Google Summer of Code: developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/

FOSSASIA Labs: http://labs.fossasia.org/

Continue ReadingFOSSASIA Code-In Grand Prize Winners Gathering at Google Headquarter

Kids Coding with FOSSASIA and Google Code-In

After the successful Google Summer of Code we are very happy and honored to participate for the second year in Google Code-In. The contest introduces pre-university students (ages 13-17) to open source software development and runs from December 7 2015 until January 25, 2016. Learn more here.

Because Google Code-in is often the first experience many students have with open source, the contest is designed to make it easy for students to jump right in. Open source organizations chosen by Google provide a list of tasks for students to work on during the seven week contest period. A unique part of the contest is that each task has mentors from the organization assigned should students have questions or need help along the way.

Google Code-In FOSSASIA

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TicTacToe Tutorial #FunWithPharo

reposted from jigyasagrover.wordpress.com/tictactoe-tutorial-funwithpharo

This tutorial has been included as a chapter in  Fun With Pharo!



Tic-tac-toe (or Noughts and crosses, Xs and Os) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The player who succeeds in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row wins the game.

Because of the simplicity of Tic-tac-toe, it is often used as a pedagogical tool for teaching the concepts of good sportsmanship and the branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the searching of game trees. It is straightforward to write a computer program to play Tic-tac-toe perfectly, to enumerate the 765 essentially different positions (the state space complexity), or the 26,830 possible games up to rotations and reflections (the game tree complexity) on this space.

t

So , here we make a Pharo version of this well-known game by using Morph. This post provides a step-by-step approach on how to go about building this simple application.

TTT2

A game package will be built having 3 subclasses :

  • TicTacToe
  • TicTacToeCell
  • TicTacToeModel

Initially , we have created TicTacToe a subclass of the Object class. The subclasses we will make will be combined in the package game as mentioned in the category: parameter.

Object subclass: #TicTacToe
instanceVariableNames: 'container model'
classVariableNames: ''
poolDictionaries: ''
category: 'game'

A category name is not required in order for the class to work, but you will not be able to access the class to make changes or to look at existing code unless you provide a category name. (The category name used can be a new category name or the name of an existing category.)

The poolDictionaries: parameter is seldom used and will not be discussed here, and the category: parameter specifies the category under which this class will be grouped in the system browser.

As we know, a class encapsulates data values and methods, and every object contains a set of the data values and can receive any of the methods as a message. The data values in each object are specified by providing a set of names of variables whose values will be an object’s internal data values. Each object has its own set of these values, and the set of data values for an object represents the object’s state (or value). The variables that contain the data values of an object are called the instance variables for the object, and the instanceVariableNames: parameter is a list of names, separated by blanks, for the instance variables. In the above code snippet , we have declared container and model as two instanceVariables.

The classVariableNames: parameter lists the identifiers that are the names of variables shared by the class and all of its objects. That is, there is only one set of these, and they are used by the class and all of its objects. Class variables (so called because they belong to the class, of which there is only one, rather than to the objects that are instances of the class) are rarely needed.

An example of a class variable that could be useful is in a case where we wanted a unique “serial number” to be assigned to each instance of the class as it is created. The variable containing the next available (or last used) serial number would appropriately be a class variable, and each time a new instance (object) is created the serial number would be recorded as an instance variable value in the object and the serial number in the class variable would be incremented. Thus, each object can be serially numbered as it is created (without using one of those nasty global variables!).

After executing the code above, class TicTacToe will exist. However, it will have no methods other than those that are inherited from class Object. To make it useful, we must add the methods that are needed for our implementation.

Adding methods to classes :

The subClasses interact by passing messages through objects only.

TicTacToe>>#initialize 
container := Morph new 
              layoutPolicy: TableLayout new; 
              color: Color transparent.
model := TicTacToeModel new:3.
self addRows.
self addControls.
^self.

The notation TicTacToe>>#initialize means that we have a method named initialize in the subclass TicTacToe.

In the initialize: method above , we have a container which is the instance of the class Morph (Morphic is the name given to Pharo’s graphical interface. ). We define the various attributes of the container such as layoutPolicy: and color:. model is another instance of the class TicTacToeModel which we will be creating further in this example.

self refers to the receiver of the message. It is usually used within a method to send additional messages to the receiver. self is frequently used when it is desired to pass the sender object (self), as a message argument, to a receiver who requires knowledege of the sender or who will in some way manipulate the sender.

In short, self refers to the object itself that defines the method.

TicTacToe>>#addRows
| rowMorph aCell rowCol |
1 to:3 do:[ :row |
rowMorph := Morph new layoutPolicy: RowLayout new.
1 to: 3 do: [ :col |
aCell := TicTacToeCell new.
aCell setModel: (model) row: row col: col.
rowMorph addMorph: aCell.
].
container addMorph: rowMorph.
]

The method addRows (the name is self explanatory) is used to add rows in the Tic Tac Toe grid. It declares temporary (local) variables rowMorph , aCell and rowCol which can’t be used beyond this method.

1 to:3 do:[ :row |

rowMorph := Morph new layoutPolicy: RowLayout new.

1 to: 3 do: [ :col |

aCell := TicTacToeCell new.

aCell setModel: (model) row: row col: col.

rowMorph addMorph: aCell.

].

The above code snippet works as a nested loop that runs thrice for each three rows to create a 3X3 grid as per requirement.

TicTacToe>>#addControls
| rowMorph newGameButton exitGameButton |
rowMorph := Morph new 
             layoutPolicy: RowLayout new; 
             color: Color transparent.
newGameButton := self createCtrlLabelled: 'New'    onClickExecutes: [self restart].
exitGameButton := self createCtrlLabelled: 'Exit'  onClickExecutes: [container delete].
rowMorph addMorph: exitGameButton.
rowMorph addMorph: newGameButton.
container addMorph: rowMorph.

This method adds controls to the game. The local variables are : rowMorph , newGameButton and exitGameButton.

rowMorph defines an instance of the class Morph which would be the placeholder for the two control buttons located at the top. The two control buttons are defined as New using the variable new GameButton which on click would restart the game , and Exit using the exitGameButton which on click would close the game. The buttons are created using a method createCtrlLabelled which we define next.

rowMorph addMorph: newGameButton adds the button to the Morph instance created earlier.

TicTacToe>>#createCtrlLabelled: aString onClickExecutes: aBlock
| aCtrlButton |
aCtrlButton := SimpleButtonMorph new label: aString.
aCtrlButton color: (Color black alpha: 0.2).
aCtrlButton extent: 120@50.
aCtrlButton on: #click send: #value to: aBlock.
^aCtrlButton.

TicTacToe>>#createCtrlLabelled: aString onClickExecutes: aBlock method makes a simple button using Morph adds label and control to it.

TicTacToe>>#open 
container openInWindow.

The open method defines as to how the game/TicTacToe class would open. Here we have defined it to open in a dialog box.

TicTacToe>>#restart
container delete.
Smalltalk garbageCollect.
TicTacToe new open.

It closes the game and calls for Garbage Collection (Garbage Collection (GC) is a form of automatic memory management. It finds data objects in a program that cannot be accessed in the future and reclaims the resources used by those objects.)

SimpleButtonMorph subclass: #TicTacToeCell
instanceVariableNames: 'parentModel rowNum colNum'
classVariableNames: ''
poolDictionaries: ''
category: 'game'

Here a subclass TicTacToeCell is defind in the SimpleButtonMorph class with parentModel , rowNum and colNum as the instance variables. This class defines the button for each cell of the grid.

TicTacToeCell>>#initialize 
super initialize.
self label: ''.
self extent: 80@80.
self color: Color yellow .
self on: #click send: #value to: (self onClickExecutionBlock).
^self.

This initialize method initialises the button size as 80X80 and gives it the color: yellow. An ‘onClick’ control is given to the button which then calls the onClickExecutionBlock method present in the same class.

TicTacToeCell>>#setModel: ticTacToeModel row: aRow col: aCol
parentModel := ticTacToeModel.
rowNum := aRow.
colNum := aCol.

The setModel: row: col: takes three arguments ticTacToeModel , aRow and aCol. The parentModel is assigned ticTacToeModel , roNum becomes the value of aRow and similiarly colNum has the value aCol.

TicTacToeCell>>#onClickExecutionBlock
^[
(self label size) == 0
ifTrue:[
self label: (parentModel updateAtRow: rowNum 
                Col: colNum).
parentModel checkWinCondition.
self extent: 80@80.
].
 ]

This method defines what should happen when each cell in the grid is clicked. At every click , the label of the cell is changed to X or O depending upon whose turn it is , the row numbers and coloumn numbers are updated in the parentModel and win condition is checked by calling the checkWinCondition method of the class TicTacToeModel defined next.

Matrix subclass: #TicTacToeModel
instanceVariableNames: 'filledCellCount currentFill winner'
classVariableNames: ''
poolDictionaries: ''
category: 'game'

A subclass TicTacToeModel is defined in the Matrix class with filledCellCount , currentFill and winner as the instance variables.

TicTacToeModel>>#initialize 
super initialize.
filledCellCount := 0.
currentFill := nil.
winner := nil.

This initialize methods defines that initially no cell in the grid is filled and there is no winner as of now.

TicTacToeModel>>#updateAtRow: r Col: c
currentFill == nil
ifTrue:[ currentFill := 'X'. ]
ifFalse:[
currentFill == 'X'
ifTrue: [ currentFill := 'O'. ]
ifFalse: [ currentFill := 'X'. ]
].
self at: r at: c put: currentFill.
filledCellCount := filledCellCount + 1.
^currentFill.

The updateRowAt: Col: method takes two arguments r and c used to update the currentFill and filledCellCount variables.

TicTacToeModel>>#checkWinCondition
filledCellCount >= 5 "for optimization. Win can occur minimum at 5th turn"
ifTrue: [
Transcript show: 'Yes'.
1 to: 3 do: [:idx |
self checkWinConditionInRow: idx.
self checkWinConditionInColumn: idx.
].
self checkWinConditionInDiagonals.
].
checkWinConditionInRow: rowNum
|set|
winner isNil
ifTrue: [
set := (self atRow: rowNum) asSet.
self checkWinConditionInSet: set
].
^winner.

The method checkWinCondition is self explanatory. It is used to check if we have a winner or not at every move.

TicTacToeModel>>#checkWinConditionInColumn: colNum
|set|
winner isNil
ifTrue: [
set := (self atColumn: colNum) asSet.
self checkWinConditionInSet: set.
].
^winner.
TicTacToeModel>>#checkWinConditionInDiagonals
|set1 set2 |
winner isNil
ifTrue: [
set1 := (self diagonal) asSet.
set2 := Set newFrom: {(self at: 1 at: 3). (self at: 2 at: 2). (self at: 3 at: 1)} asOrderedCollection.
self checkWinConditionInSet: set1.
self checkWinConditionInSet: set2.
].
^winner.
TicTacToeModel>>#checkWinConditionInSet: aSet
aSet size == 1
ifTrue: [
(aSet includes: 'X')
ifTrue: [
        winner := 'P1'. 
        Transcript open. 
        Transcript show: 'Player 1 is the winner!!'.
    ].

(aSet includes: 'O')

ifTrue: [
        winner := 'P2'.  
        Transcript open. 
        Transcript show: 'Player 2 is the winner!!'.
    ].
].

example2.

Now , we have made the game. To open the game , simply execute the following in the playground/workspace.

TicTacToe new open.

The messages : ‘Yes’ , ‘Player x is the winner’ will be displayed in the Transcript.

PS – This was just the basic implementation. I plan to improvise it further with graphics and other functionality/features.

Do like the post if it was helpful.
For any queries/suggestions please comment below.

Thank You

Continue ReadingTicTacToe Tutorial #FunWithPharo

Learn Smalltalk in Online Workshops

During Google Code-In we had several tasks that were aimed at teaching smalltalk to students to they could help with smalltalk projects. Some students were interested to continue learning after Code-In was over, so we started a series of online workshops.

The Workshop is made up of a series of live-coding video lectures. Watch the videos, code along, and ask questions on IRC.

The best time to ask is saturdays from 2pm to 6pm chinese time, that is 7am to 11am CET or 6am to 10am UTC. You can find eMBee on freenode irc in the channels #fossasia and #pharo.

First session: Using the FileSystem class in Pharo Smalltalk

Second session: Serving files through FileSystem in Pharo Smalltalk

Third Session: A static webapplication hosted on Pharo Smalltalk

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FOSSASIA joining Google Code-In Program for Students Age 13-17

We are proud to announce that FOSSASIA has been chosen as a mentor organization for Google Code-In 2015. FOSSASIA is one of twelve global organizations participating in the program for students from the 13-17 years old.

Google Code-In is a global, online contest for 13-17 year old pre-university students interested in learning more about Open Source development. Students work on bite-sized tasks for real-world open source projects in a variety of categories.

Students can register and take over tasks starting from December 1, 2014 and work on tasks until January 19. All tasks are listed on the website at http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2014

Contest Timeline

December 1, 2014, 9:00 AM Pacific Time / 17:00 UTC: Contest opens for entries by student participants

January 18, 2015, 9:00 AM Pacific Time/ 17:00 UTC: No more tasks can be claimed by students after this time

January 19, 2015, 9:00 AM Pacific Time / 17:00 UTC: All work stops, Contest ends

January 26, 2015: Mentoring Organizations submit their grand prize winner nominees to Google Open Source Programs Office

February 2, 2015: Google Open Source Programs Office announces the grand prize winners via blog post

June 2015: Grand Prize trip to Google and northern California

 

Links

* Google Code-In http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2014

* FOSSASIA at Google Code-In http://www.google-melange.com/gci/org/google/gci2014/fossasia

Continue ReadingFOSSASIA joining Google Code-In Program for Students Age 13-17