14 DAY TRIAL // Google's Summer of Code has established itself as one of the premiere student development programs around. In the recent five years, Sri Lanka has supplied companies that have entered the Summer of Code program a huge number of professionals in various programming-related domains. The Summer of Code program is a Google initiative that sponsors students to write code for open-source programs under the supervision of experienced mentors from various big companies.
With only 20 million people, the country has supplied Google's program with 106 students, surpassing other programming power houses like Italy, Netherlands, Romania or Israel. Sure, thanks to its small population, it does not rank at the very top, but judging by a simple ratio (accepted student / total number of population), it ranks right at the top, beating countries like the USA, India, Russia, China or Canada.
But these numbers aren't that representative. More interesting is a top ten of the most successful universities that have constantly sent students in the program year after year. Right at the top in this year's program, and in the overall category, is the University of Moratuwa with a massive number of 79 students, out of which 22 joined the program this year. Suddenly, this small list brings new light and respect to a country unmentioned before in the world of code developing.
Here is this year's top ten supplied by the official Google Summer of Code statistics page:
Sri Lanka - University of Moratuwa – 22 Brazil - University of Campinas / UNICAMP – 12 China - Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences – 11 Romania - Polytechnic University of Bucharest – 11 Poland - Gdansk University of Technology – 10 Austria - Vienna University of Technology – 9 India - Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Goa campus – 9 Sweden - Royal Institute of Technology – 9 India - Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University – 8 Singapore - National University of Singapore - 8.
And this is the overall top ten:
Sri Lanka - University of Moratuwa - 79 Brazil - University of Campinas / UNICAMP - 37 Canada - University of Toronto - 34 Austria - Vienna University of Technology - 31 China - Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences - 30 United States - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - 28 Poland - Wroclaw University of Technology - 27 Hungary - Budapest University of Technology and Economics - 21 Canada - Carleton University - 21 Romania - Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi - 20.