How I Got Selected for GSoC: My Journey with sbi

Satwik Sai Prakash Sahoo — Sun, 31 May 2026 19:55:27 +0000

Hey everyone! I am super excited to share that I have been selected for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) with NumFOCUS. I will be working on the Neural Network Builder API Refactor project for the organization sbi (Simulation-Based Inference).

If you are wondering how to get started with open source or what the GSoC process is really like, here is the story of how I got here. Stay tuned, because I will keep updating you on my GSoC journey and sharing my experiences as I get deeper into the project!

Why I Started Open Source

Being a fan of Linus Torvalds, I was always fascinated by open source. Also, I wanted to test my coding skills. I wanted to know: Is my code actually good enough for the real world? In my first year of college, I spent a lot of time doing competitive programming. At the same time, I was teaching myself machine learning and mathematics, working mostly with Python and PyTorch.

Finding the Right Project

When I decided to try open source, I wanted to find an organization that actually matched what I was learning. Because I was already into machine learning and PyTorch, I went looking for something in that space.

That is how I found sbi.

Making my first Pull Request (PR) was a little scary, but the maintainers at sbi were incredibly welcoming. They patiently guided me through my early, beginner-level PRs. Thanks to their feedback, I learned so much about how to write clean, high-quality code.

The GSoC Surprise

After a few months of fixing bugs and contributing, I found out from the maintainers that sbi would be participating in GSoC this year. They encouraged me and appreciated the work I had done over the past few months, for which I will be forever grateful.

But there was one problem: I hadn't researched GSoC at all. I had no idea what the requirements were or how to write a project proposal.

Getting Help with the Proposal

Writing the proposal was tough since it was my first time. Luckily, I didn't have to do it alone.

The maintainers also stepped up to mentor me. They reviewed my proposal drafts, gave me detailed feedback, and helped me improve it step by step until it was ready.

What's Next?

All that hard work and community support paid off, and I got accepted!

The GSoC community bonding period just finished up. In my next blog post, I will share exactly what I did during this bonding period to get ready for the main coding phase.