Students Invited To Google Summer Of Code

It’s no secret that the job market is less than robust right now, and things look especially grim for people who don’t have their feet wedged in some doors.  Fortunately, Google Summer of Code 2009 is swooping in to give students all sorts of great opportunities.

At the very least, participants will get t-shirts, figurative gold stars on their resumes, and $4,500 in their bank accounts.  At the most, well, some direct job offers are likely to result.

As for what Google Summer of Code is, a post on the Google Code blog explains that it’s "our global program to introduce university students to the wonderful world of Open Source development.  For our fifth Summer of Code, students can choose from 150 Free and Open Source software projects, in technical areas as diverse as gaming to humanitarian efforts to operating system design.  All accepted students will be paired with a mentor from academia or industry and will receive coaching in all aspects of software development over the course of their three month coding project."