Hey there, My name is Richard Just, I'm a final year BSc Applied Computer Science student at Reading University, UK, with a strong focus on programming. I'm just finishing up a term that included modules in Distributed Computing and Evolutionary Computation, which have been the greatest modules of my uni career by far. Between that, my love for open source and having read about the ASF, I'm really interested in taking part in GSoC with an ASF project, namely Mahout. I'm really taken by the ethos behind the ASF as a whole and I'm hoping that taking part in GSoC will be the start of my long term involvement with ASF projects.
My main programming background is Java, and I did a 9 month placement programming in it for a non-profit organisation last year. From that placement I gained a love and appreciation for well commented, well documented code, while from my time at university I now have a passion for well designed code and the time it saves. With GSoC, I've read through the suggested Mahout projects so far, and I think implementing an algorithm is probably my best bet. I say that because I don't have much Mahout experience yet, but through multiple University modules I do have experience designing and implementing algorithms. With that in mind and given that there is already a Classifier proposal, I was thinking either a Cluster or Recommendation algorithm. I'd be very interested in hearing if there are any particular Clustering algorithms or particular elements of the top Netflix team solutions people would like to see implemented? Many thanks for reading this RSJ
