It's Over!

Well, it's not really over, but yesterday, the 18^th, was the last day of coding for Google Summer of Code students. Service clients are 90% done as of this writing, and it shouldn't be hard to get the other 10% done in a day or two, plus some bugfixes. But deadline or no deadline, service clients are a sugary-sweet feature that XMMS2 really needs, and I will be hacking on them for a long time to come.

SoC certainly solidified a few lessons about the real world for me. Most importantly, in my humble opinion, is that money changes things. When you're coding for money, you're coding under a deadline, and it's incredibly easy to fall behind. The result/value split code that service clients depended on was supposed to be completed and merged before SoC even began. It's only now that SoC is over that the result/value split is "done" and it's still unmerged. The API for my project changed half a dozen times before I wrote a line of its code. And a myriad of personal issues took days and days of quality hacking time away from me. Lucky for me my mentor(s) were great in helping me sort out issues with the design and code, and reestablishing goals to fit the program into the summer. Thank you, nano and theefer!

A sure bonus is I now have a jumpstart on understanding the result/value split code and all that it brings. Since it is a pervasive change to both the client library and server-side, there's no getting anywhere without knowing how to work with it. Plus, as a member of the XMMS2 team, I'll be there after SoC to help merge, document, and answer questions.

Now with the finish line in sight, the thought of the upcoming mergefest and eventually, users using service clients has me more motivated than ever before. And I'm filled with a sense of great pride that I stuck it out through the summer and created something I feel is worth being proud of. But for now, I'm going to play a quick round of DDR with my little sister and get back to work.