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Updated the final wrap-up of GSoC '25, enhancing the excerpt and detailing project goals, achievements, challenges, key learnings, reflections, and acknowledgments.
excerpt: "Summarizing my GSoC 2025 journey: building the Masonry Module for Music Blocks v4, key results, challenges, and reflections."
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excerpt: "An in-depth summary of my GSoC 2025 journey with Sugar Labs — developing the Masonry Module for Music Blocks v4, a scalable visual programming system for music and learning."
- Finalize bug fixes, polish UI, and stabilize interactions.
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- Prepare project documentation and final report.
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- Write retrospective blog summarizing the entire journey.
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The final phase of my Google Summer of Code journey with **Sugar Labs** aimed to refine, integrate, and finalize the **Masonry Module** — a core system powering the next-generation visual programming interface for **Music Blocks v4**.
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The focus areas included:
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- Final integration of **brick rendering**, **palette system**, **tower formation**, and **AST mapping**.
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- Stabilizing the **drag-and-drop playground**, ensuring reliable stacking, nesting, and disconnection.
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- Preparing comprehensive **documentation** for both developers and contributors.
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- Writing the **final technical report** and this retrospective blog.
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These efforts concluded months of iterative design, testing, and collaboration toward building a modular and educationally meaningful system.
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---
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## Achievements
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1.**Final Integration**
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- Combined **brick rendering, palette, drag-and-drop, disconnections, and AST mapping** into one cohesive system.
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- Verified functionality across simple, expression, and compound brick types.
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### 1. The Masonry Module: Overview
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The Masonry Module establishes a modern, scalable infrastructure for creating and manipulating **lego-like “bricks”** that represent musical or programming concepts. These can be stacked, nested, or connected dynamically — forming *towers* that map directly to Music Blocks’ internal execution engine.
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2.**Documentation**
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- Wrote detailed documentation covering architecture, utilities, and developer setup.
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- Submitted final report for GSoC archives.
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This new system replaces the previous, limited brick renderer with a **Model–View architecture** and **reactive playground**. It bridges visual programming with AST-based execution, giving learners a smooth, interactive coding experience.
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3.**Community Contribution**
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- Collaborated with fellow contributors for bug fixes.
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- Received valuable feedback from mentors on UX design and technical choices.
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---
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### 2. Phase-wise Implementation
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#### **Brick Rendering with SVG**
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- Designed **Simple**, **Expression**, and **Compound** bricks entirely using **Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs)**.
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- Developed the `brickFactory` function to generate customized SVG paths dynamically, enabling variable width, labels, and color properties.
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- Verified rendering behavior in **Storybook**, ensuring each brick scaled correctly and retained sharpness across resolutions.
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-[Pull Request #439 – SVG Paths for Bricks](https://github.com/sugarlabs/musicblocks-v4/pull/439)
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#### **Model–View Architecture**
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- Established a clean separation between data and view using abstract and concrete models (`BrickModel`, `SimpleBrick`, `ExpressionBrick`, `CompoundBrick`).
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- Implemented modular React components for each brick type to ensure maintainability.
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- This architecture enables real-time UI updates without coupling with execution logic, simplifying debugging and future expansion.
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-[Pull Request #441 – Add Model and View for Bricks](https://github.com/sugarlabs/musicblocks-v4/pull/441)
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#### **Tower Formation System**
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- Introduced a hierarchical structure for stacking and nesting bricks to form **towers**, each representing a logical program unit.
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- Implemented DFS/BFS traversal to compute tower dimensions, resolve bounding boxes, and validate connections.
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- Managed all **connection points** and **parent-child relationships** dynamically, allowing bricks to merge or disconnect smoothly.
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-[Pull Request #442 – Tower Model and Connection Points](https://github.com/sugarlabs/musicblocks-v4/pull/442)
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#### **Palette and Playground**
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- Created a **categorized palette** with search and tooltips, making bricks accessible by function and category.
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- Integrated **drag-and-drop interactions** using **React Aria DnD** and **Recoil** for global state management.
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- Designed a **collision detection system** using **Quadtree data structure** to efficiently validate drop targets, improving performance even for dense workspaces.
#### **Disconnection Logic and Real-time Updates**
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- Added logic to **disconnect towers** interactively by dragging bricks away.
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- Updated bounding boxes, recalculated parent-child references, and triggered state re-renders for each interaction.
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- This real-time responsiveness ensured a natural user experience, similar to physical Lego snapping.
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-[Pull Request #450 – Tower Disconnection and Workspace Dragging](https://github.com/sugarlabs/musicblocks-v4/pull/450)
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#### **AST Integration**
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- Developed mappings for **26+ AST node types**, including `BinaryOperatorExpression`, `FunctionCallStatement`, and others.
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- Each brick type now translates to its corresponding AST node, enabling execution within the Music Blocks engine.
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- This marks the first bridge between visual programming and Music Blocks’ underlying logic interpreter — a major step toward interactive, runnable programs.
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---
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## Challenges
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- Balancing **scope creep** vs. realistic deliverables.
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- Optimizing performance for larger towers with nested bricks.
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- Ensuring seamless UX across all brick interactions.
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Despite significant progress, several challenges shaped the final outcome:
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-**Performance Optimization:** Managing collision detection and layout recalculations efficiently when dealing with hundreds of bricks required refining Quadtree traversal and caching results.
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-**Nesting Complexity:** Maintaining precise geometry for nested compound bricks during disconnection or drag operations involved complex coordinate recalculations.
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-**Timeline and Scope:** Deciding between additional stretch goals (like macro handling and trash management) and polishing the existing system demanded careful prioritization.
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-**Cross-Platform Consistency:** Ensuring uniform interactions across different browsers and screen resolutions added another layer of testing complexity.
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Each challenge improved my understanding of scalable system design and performance-conscious UI engineering.
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---
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## Key Learnings
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- Designing for **scalability** is as important as delivering features.
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- Collaboration and feedback loops are critical for open-source success.
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- Improved knowledge in **React, SVG, ASTs, and data structure optimizations**.
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My key learnings during this project include:
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-**System Architecture:** Designing with Model–View separation improved debugging, scalability, and readability.
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-**Algorithmic Thinking:** Applying **DFS/BFS** for tower traversal and **Quadtree** for collision detection strengthened my data structure skills.
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-**Frontend Engineering:** Gained proficiency in **React**, **SVG path rendering**, **state management**, and **component reusability**.
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-**Compiler Concepts:** Mapping visual bricks to AST nodes provided practical insights into compiler design and program representation.
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-**Open-Source Collaboration:** Learned the importance of structured communication, iterative reviews, and collective ownership in distributed development.
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---
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## Reflections
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> GSoC 2025 has been transformative. From learning how to render scalable SVG paths to building a full drag-and-drop visual programming system, this project taught me both technical depth and collaborative spirit.
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> “GSoC 2025 was more than a coding project — it was a design challenge, a learning curve, and a creative collaboration.”
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Working on Music Blocks taught me how technical precision and educational intent can coexist.
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The Masonry Module now enables learners to **compose music while learning programming**, reflecting Sugar Labs’ vision of learning through exploration.
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This work will help future learners explore music and coding in a playful, powerful way.
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This project pushed me to understand not only how to build software, but how to make it *meaningful, modular, and maintainable*. It also deepened my respect for open-source collaboration — the feedback, reviews, and collective insights made each milestone achievable.
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I’m proud to have contributed to something that will help future students experiment, create, and learn — through music and code.
-**Detailed Final Report:**[GSoC 2025 - Final Report](https://github.com/saumyashahi/GSoC-2025/blob/main/Final-Report.md)
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-**Weekly Progress Reports:**[Saumya’s GSoC Blog Series](https://www.sugarlabs.org/authors/saumya-shahi)
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---
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## Acknowledgments
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Deep gratitude to my mentors **Anindya Kundu, Walter Bender, and Devin Ulibarri** for their guidance. Special thanks to the **Sugar Labs community** for encouragement and support throughout my GSoC journey.
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I extend my heartfelt gratitude to my mentors **Anindya Kundu**, **Walter Bender**, and **Devin Ulibarri** for their consistent guidance, in-depth reviews, and insightful discussions. Their mentorship helped me understand not just *what* to build, but *why* it matters.
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A warm thank you to the **Sugar Labs community** for their continued support, feedback, and encouragement — especially during testing and integration stages.
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Collaborating with such a passionate community has been a defining experience in my development journey.
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*This marks the completion of my Google Summer of Code 2025 journey with Sugar Labs — and the beginning of new explorations into how creativity and computation can work together to inspire learning.*
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