I'm excited to announce that the Pharo Consortium has been approved as an organizer for Google Summer of Code 2023! As a mentor for the Pharo TensorFlow plugin project, I'm thrilled to be a part of this program and to help developers to work on a project for the Pharo community.
Google Summer of Code is an annual program that brings together student developers from around the world to work on open source projects with experienced mentors. As in previous years, this is a great opportunity for students to gain practical experience in software development using Pharo Smalltalk and doing so by contribute to real-world projects that have an impact on the whole open source community.
The project I'm going to help with is the one we proposed last february here, Bringing TensorFlow to Pharo.
The Pharo TensorFlow plugin project aims to integrate TensorFlow, a popular machine learning library, with the Pharo programming language. This will enable Pharo developers to efficiently incorporate high-performing computations that are typical in a hot segment of the industry right now: machine learning and everything AI. And with a Pharo TensorFlow Plugin, the capabilities of the Pharo applications are not going to be limited to the CPU anymore. They will start to be able to yield GPU power to execute all the powerful features and algebraic conveniences that TensorFlow provides.
Together with Sebastian Jordan, we'll be mentoring this project to work closely with student developers and guide them through the development process, answer their questions, and help them overcome the challenges that they encounter along the way. I'm excited to see what they will achieve and to help them make a meaningful contribution to the Pharo community.
If you're a student developer who is interested in participating in Google Summer of Code 2023, we encourage you to check out the program website and explore the various projects that are available. And if you're interested in the Pharo TensorFlow plugin project, we'd love to hear from you! Feel free to reach out to us to learn more and to get involved.
We look forward to a productive and exciting Google Summer of Code 2023, and we can't wait to see what the future holds for the Pharo community and the open source projects that we're working on. Stay tuned for more updates and progress reports throughout the summer!