[tor-dev] Seeking advice on master level project

[Philipp Winter]

Hi Yiwen,

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 06:59:43PM -0600, Yiwen Zhu wrote:
> I am current a master student working on a graduation project. I am interested
> in the project Develop a Censorship Analyzer for Tor. But I am new to Python
> and only have 1 semester to finish it. So it seems too large scale for me to
> undertake this project. I am wondering whether it is an appropriate project for
> me. I will appreciate any comments and suggestions.

One semester might indeed be tough; especially if you are new to Python.
Before you, two students tried to write some code for the project but were
running out of time because they were new to Twisted (the Python framework,
OONI is built on) which can be a little bit difficult in the beginning.  They
ended up writing some shell scripts instead.

On the other hand, the project is supposed to consist of a number of
(semi-)independent tests.  Nobody expects you to build a completely functional
tool from scratch in a couple of weeks.  So you could experiment with a handful
of tests and see how far you can go.  I believe, the same applies to OONI which
also consists of a number of network tests.  So that might also be an
interesting project.  I'll try and help whenever I can, but I'm also warning
you that there might be some unexpected road blocks on the way.  Another
important factor is what exactly your university requires you to do in order to
pass.

Cheers,
Philipp