Hey, it's me! crowded_geek
Most probably you haven’t heard this name before, have you? Let me know in the comments below 😅
Kindly forgive me if you’re a grammar nazi and you find an error here :D
You’re in high school and like programming just like I do but till now you didn’t know about any prestigious contest which you could use to test yourself out and after hearing about Code-in you started searching about it and stumped upon this piece of… art => recursion.
Note: Go ahead only if you understood what recursion meant in the context of the above extract.
Just kidding… you can read anyways, isn’t that why I wrote this so that you can get a better idea of what Google Code-in is and how it works.
How about I explain all this to you like a story?
Sure then, I will 😄
Honestly, I don’t really remember everything about the day when I myself came to know about GCI (Google Code-in) but i’ll assume that it was a pretty normal day but there was something special that happened that day… I got a Case while playing CS:GO which was worth like 3 dollars so yeah that IS special 😆.
Okay okay let’s come to the point now, basically the contest is great it helps you learn new things and it also helps you know that how the things are made in the “professional” way, I mean if you’re like me, an Indie Dev then you have to take part in GCI you just HAVE to, there’s no way back now that you’ve read this.
Note: Don’t get your hopes up if you’re over the age of 17 years old.
What are you waiting for? probably for the contest to start but if it has already started then just go to this website, register yourself then come back to this blog and yeah cool down it isn’t that simple.
Source: Google Code-in
After the registration part is done, you have to choose the organization you want to work with (only if you’re thinking to be a finalist or a Grand Prize Winner) but if that isn’t your choice then you can just skip this step and go to the next one, this is where you can see the organizations which are a part of Google Code-in this year, now just think about the technologies or languages you think that you’re comfortable with and then just read about each organization one by one clicking the “View Info” button and decide!
Source: Google Code-in
Now that you’ve selected the organization, join it’s chat, for the most organization you’ll see a “Chat” button on the bottom-right side of the organization’s info page.
Source: Google Code-in
After doing that the first thing you wanna do is go to this tasks page and look for your very first task you wanna do.
Now that you’ve selected a task and you’re ready to do it, do i really need to give you motivation for that? Just go and start doing it 😅
All the requirements and steps to complete the step can be found on this page and if you ever feel like stuck in a task then just copy the task link and get your doubt cleared by the mentors or your peer students using the link, don’t ever hesitate to ask for help and always try to help others if you can, that’s what makes a community better!
Source: Google Code-in
Now after you get your task approved! Oh that is a really special feeling you get everyday during GCI and it’s like a force which keeps you moving.
I’m pretty sure if you understood everything above and saw this tiny little orangeish link in the image above, i don’t feel a need to guide you more in the process 😃
Source: What? not everything has a source. I made it myself 😅
Now that you know about ‘How to’ work around with GCI, I’d like to share some things with you and give you a little bit more guidance which is totally your choice to follow or not.
First things first, never cheat. Never! don’t even try to act all smart because the one you cheated from will always know :D.
Secondly, don’t irritate the mentors by sending repetitive messages for asking for help or asking them to review your task.
They are humans too and they’re doing this for literally nothing but just help you out never worry, they will answer you whenever they can :)
When did you take part in GCI?
I took part in GCI’18 and I’d like to especially thank some mentors who helped me complete the tasks I did and helped me in my overall growth as a developer :D
Priyanka Jain (for helping me whenever I needed, she the one who helped me the most.)
Nikita Dhiman (for making me aware of the mistakes I did in the tasks and helping me improve over them)
Divyansh Kulshreshta (for always treating me like a friend)
Harshit Dwivedi (for helping me fix my PRs and merging them :) )
Pritha Upadhyay (for helping me learn some important aspects of Git)
Ashutosh Rathi (for reviewing my tasks when needed)