Hey there, I am excited to share that my proposal for printing formatted equations got selected and I'll be working with the PyBaMM organisation for Google Summer of Code 2021

Back Story

I remember back in January, the first time I came across PyBaMM (Python Battery Mathematical Modelling), and I was so overwhelmed that I wrote a mail to them asking about how much physics should I know to start contributing to the project and asked them to point out some very beginner friendly issues to get me started.

The first pull request I made was adding a GitHub action to check invalid links and the good first issue were labelled in such a way that it was not too hard and was perfect to gradually dip my toes into it. All the maintainers have been patient and have answered every question I asked. Once I became a bit more familiar with the codebase, I was able to take up more difficult issues. I also got to know about common programming practices that are used in production such as the use of linters, documentation and tests.

Time of the year

I contacted the mentors on slack to know more about the project and their views for the same, and further drafted an initial proposal and sent them for their review. After going through the proposal, they gave positive feedback and suggested some changes. After working on the suggestions and review, I submitted the proposal on the website.

I am really thankful to the mentors for helping me in understanding the project and reviewing my proposal repeatedly and helping me in improving it.

See the proposal here

Results

So, finally, the result date had arrived i.e. 17th May. I was repeatedly checking my mailbox for any updates regarding the same. At around 11:14 PM, suddenly I saw the email, whose subject stated, "GSoC 2021: Congratulations, your proposal with NumFOCUS has been accepted!", and I was overwhelmed with happiness.

Wrapping up

The community bonding period ended on June 7. It was about 21 days long and I was getting bored sitting at home and doing nothing so I started working on the project earlier. I was invited to the weekly meetings and to the organisation on GitHub and I was so happy to see the PyBaMM logo under organisations in my profile. I will be now working on the project as planned in the proposal and integrate SymPy to render the tree into a human-readable format.