GSoC 2007 Geometry Report

Introduction

This pages summarizes my experience working on a Geometry module for SymPy under the Google Summer of Code. My name is Jason Gedge and I am going into my fourth year of a Pure Math/Computer Science double major at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.

Getting Started

The great thing before writing my proposal was finding a project that consisted of both math and Python. Although I am far from a good writer of any material (hopefully my honors thesis will be fine when I write it), my proposal was accepted and I started working right away. There were numerous emails back and forth between my mentor, Jim Jewett at the PSF, Ondrej and I clarifying things to help me get straightened out. It wasn't long before I was on my way and hacking happily off to the side.

Coding

Programming in Python has always been enjoyable to me. I mostly finished my Geometry module very early, and hence I had lots of free time to work with. I was really looking to dig into the core and got to do so when the merge of the new core was beginning. Ever since I have been just working on tiny things here and there to make sure everything is working.

The communication was pretty standard and straight-forward. At first I was sending a lot of private emails, but eventually I got into using the Issues page for discussions on, well...issues! The "surprise" that we all received (a book on OSS development and management by Karl Fogel) states that we should avoid using bug trackers to heavily in that nature, but I think it works well. This is probably because of SymPy being a "smaller" project. The mailing list was also there when needed.

I'm hoping to continue working on SymPy into the future, albeit the busy nature of university which will soon be upon me. Even just fixing a small issue here and there.

Final Thoughts

This was another busy summer for myself, but I enjoyed it. Even when I was away to WADS (an algorithms conference held outside of my province) I felt the need to do a bit of work. I couldn't develop on the machines at Dalhousie so I SSHed into my account back at my university and worked from there. When you go that far with it, you know you're having fun!