I am not sure where I missed a post, but apparently I did. Sorry about that. I was planning on posting every week during the coding period.
So far, I would say my project is doing well on time and progressing according to schedule. It really looks more complex now than it did during the first week because I implemented Maven and added a few more smaller files. The small files are mainly tests and their results. Last week (#3) I mainly worked on tests and I also ventured ahead into the next part of my project, which I am supposed to work on after evaluations according to my schedule. I think that did me good in terms of thinking ahead to the next part, however. I am also probably going to end up starting on the second part a bit earlier than planned, which is, of course, a good thing.
At the start of fourth week / end of third week, I have been testing the main bulk of code that is behind my simulation. I ran into several problems, which I have been able to fix so far. I have also had to make some structural decisions and I am facing one more big one.
The above-mentioned decision is about trying to achieve thread immutability and abstraction. Right now, I have three threads managing Oxygen and CO2 consumption and production in my fish tank simulation. They are Fish, Plants, and Decomposers. I am facing with the decision of making separate threads for everything dealing with Oxygen and CO2. I may combine Oxygen and CO2 in one thread because the conditions for changing both of them are quite similar. This would give me threads that are immutable. It would also give me less messy code. However, it means making more threads, which is expensive, and it would also make slightly less sense because in reality, plants manage their own O2 and CO2 and fish manage their own and so on. So, that is the decision I have to make... and I am leaning towards the option of change.
On another note, I have noticed something curious about the GSoC student population. 43.17 percent of all GSoC students this year are from India, which is surprisingly not proportional to India’s population compared to the rest of the world. The number of Indian students is 11 times greater than the number of Chinese students. If this was population-proportionate, the numbers would be roughly the same.
Some more fun stats. There are 0.39 enrolled American students per million US residents. There are 0.42 Indian students per million Indian residents. 0.68 German students per million German citizens. There are 0.73 Canadian participants per million Canadian residents. 2.6 Sri Lankan students per million Sri Lankan citizens. Only 0.035 Chinese students per million Chinese citizens. Stats calculated from this GSoC blog post.
Now I should mention that these are just statistics and they do not mean to generalize or offend anyone. Although some conclusions may be drawn from these stats.
