Google Summer of Code 2015 and Google Code-in 2014 are on!

A call to all students in Europe: if you have ever thought it would be cool to write code, then please keep reading. We're excited to announce the next editions of two programs designed to introduce students to open source software development, Google Summer of Code for university students and Google Code-in for 13-17 year old high schoolers.

Google Code-in

Google Code-in is an international, online contest designed to introduce  pre-university students to the world of open source development. When you read the term open source, do you think:

• What is open source?
• What types of work do open source projects do?
• I’ve only taken one computer science class, can I contribute to an open source project?
• I’m not really into coding, how else can I contribute to open source?
• I’ve never participated in open source or an online contest before, can someone help guide me?
• Open source sounds fun, how can I get started?

If you’re a high schooler and you've wondered about any of these questions, then we hope you will join in the fun and excitement. Over the past four years, we have had 1,575 students from 78 countries in the contest. This year we hope to surpass 2,000 students.

Visit the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Google Code-in site for details on how to sign up and participate. We will announce the open source organizations that will be participating in the contest on November 12. The Code-in contest starts on December 1.

Google Summer of Code

Google Summer of Code offers student developers summer stipends to write code for various open source projects.  Over the past 10 years, over 8,300 mentors and 8,500 student developers in 101 countries have produced a stunning 55 million lines of code.

If you know of a university student that would be interested in working on open source projects this summer, or if you know of an organization that might want to mentor students to work on their open source projects, please direct them to our Google Summer of Code 2015 website. Stay tuned for more details!

Posted by Stephanie Taylor and Carol Smith, Open Source Programs