[mlpack] A Friendly Hello + Contribution Idea

[Ryan Curtin]

On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 12:20:16PM +0000, Patrick Cando wrote:
> Hi Ryan, Marcus and everyone else in the MLPack community,
> 
> Permit me to start with a friendly introduction! My name is Patrick. I'm
> currently coming to the end of my MSc in Data Science at Birkbeck College,
> University of London. Prior to my MSc I was employed as a Support Engineer
> working for a logistics software company in London, and have held roles for
> the likes of Unilever and 20th Century Fox before that. I work mostly with
> Python and C++, but still wake up at night in sweats, remembering days gone
> past, whereby I've been lost for days in various jar files.
> 
> I've been working with my supervisor Professor George Magoulas on some EA
> implementation ideas, but given the popularity of the NEAT project, I
> wanted to see if there was a possibility of working on the string utility
> deliverable and integrate that as my MSc project? I think it could be a
> great way for me to get to know the community and library better, as well
> as submit something for the MSc, before trying to move on to some other
> areas.
> 
> My proposal for work needs to be submitted by April 15, so would love to
> know if this is a possibility, as I'm not sure I'll be able to make it in
> time for GSOC '19.

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for getting in touch.  Based on your history it sounds like you
might not be interested in the Java bindings project then. :)

The GSoC deadline is April 9th, so it doesn't seem like it would be too
different than the April 15th deadline you're already aiming for.

I guess, I'm not fully sure that I understand exactly what you want to
do.  Definitely the string processing utilities project is open and I'd
love to see it completed, but it sounds like you need a project for your
MSc.  Since we don't yet know who will be accepted for the string
processing utilities project (if anyone) we definitely can't promise a
spot or anything, unfortunately.  So like I said, maybe I don't
understand the needs for your proposal of work for the MSc project, but
I expect a lot of proposals for GSoC for this project, so maybe it is
not the best idea?  Let me know if I can clarify what I mean.

Another project you may find interesting that I haven't heard too much
about is the mlpack on resource-constrained devices project:

https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/wiki/SummerOfCodeIdeas#mlpack-on-rpi-and-other-resource-constrained-devices

Anyway, I'm sure we can work something out; I hope that my email is a
step in the right direction. :)

Thanks!

Ryan

-- 
Ryan Curtin    | "I'm just going to shoot you once!"
ryan at ratml.org |   - Joseph Dunn