Introducing Team Fedex++

Posted on by Mansi and Sahar

Team Fedex++

Play in pain, Play in problem and Play in all sorts of conditions.
- Roger Federer

Team-Fedex++
image taken by Sahar Siddiqui

Die hard Roger Federer Fans, our team name itself reveals our first common interest to join hands together to form a team in the first place. We are Mansi Goel and Sahar Siddiqui from IIIT-Delhi, India, in our 3rd year of Undergrad School and ready to take this journey of learning something new for the benefit of society with full energy and enthusiasm.

Our first exposure to the Rails Girls Summer of Code was when a team from our institute (Jayasi Mehar and Megha Arora) got selected for it. To us, it seemed like a great achievement that you get to work with one of the finest developers in open source. Frankly, we couldn’t really understand the real essence of ‘Open Source’ until we got affiliated to the development society of IIIT-Delhi i.e. Byld. Our seniors became our mentors and guided us through all the terms. This way we realised the enthusiasm within ourselves to code for the community.

Mansi: When I first heard that the application process is going to begin soon, first and last person to cross my mind was Sahar. There just couldn’t have been anyone else for this.
Sahar: I was introduced to RGSoC by Mansi herself. I’ve always been interested in taking up challenging tasks but at the same time hesitant in applying for some. And Mansi asking me to pair up for RGSoC’16 was just a blessing in disguise.

We both knew it is going to be tough considering the academic workload we have in the Institute. But the desire within us to learn something and the fact that we would be working with people all over the world who will guide us superseded all our fears.

Why PyDSA?

Project ‘PyDSA’ is an Open Source Python Library for the implementations of various Data Structures and Algorithms. Along with this, it provides a visualisation tool for beginners to have a deeper understanding of working of Algorithms.
We are Python lovers. We get a problem and the first way that comes in our mind to solve it is through Python. Choosing PyDSA over any other project was comfortable for us and at the same time challenging considering our ardent love for Algorithms and Python. We have got to give it our best :p

Team PyDSA
All images have been taken from Rails Girls Team App with permissions

First Pydelhi Conference
  • We attended our first ever conference in March when we found out that one of biggest PyDelhi conferences was happening very close to our institute.
  • Amongst most amazing talks on latest tools and technologies, we realised that participation of women is drastically low in these kind of events.
  • We were so disappointed by the fact that there is such low awareness amongst women and we realised the importance of initiatives like RGSoC to promote girls into this environment.
  • It also happened to be the place where we first met our Mentor, Amit Kumar who also introduced us to two of our coaches, Anuvrat Parashar and Saurabh Kumar.
Coaches, Mentors and Supervisors
  • We got introduced to our mentor in the PyDelhi Conference who did an amazing job at encouraging us to apply for RGSoC. He even helped us find out coaches.
  • We found another coach amongst our friends, Ankit Sultana and the other one being our professor at IIITD, Dr. Rahul Purandare.
  • All our Coaches form a highly enthusiastic group of programmers who never fail to encourage us, are available 24/7 for help and are more than willing to motivate us to continue our journey in Open Source that we have started with RGSoC.
  • We have been fortunate enough to have Vaishali Thakkar and Sophia Takeva as our amazing supervisors throughout this journey of RGSoC.

Team-Fedex++ at Work
image taken by Sahar Siddiqui

What we have achieved so far?

  • We designed the basic draft of PyDSA visualisation website. Link to wireframes : https://goo.gl/8paaNx
  • We learnt about Pep8 format, Python Tests, Travis CI and a few issues and their solutions.
  • We set up a Django server and made a Test App in it.
  • As guided by our coaches, we started learning more about d3.js library and tried to code a few visualisations in it.
  • We learnt how does the interaction between the frontend and backend works using d3.js in frontend and Django framework.
  • We learnt about classes and objects in Python and Design Patterns that should be implemented in order to structure the PyDSA library.
  • Completed the list of algorithms mentioned in the list of algorithms required for the first official release.

In the process, we have reviewed some Pull Requests made by others and we have sent a few of them ourselves.

Our Goals for the Future

  • To set up the official web app on Django platform.
  • To implement all the basic visualisation algorithms using d3.js.
  • To complete the documentation of the algorithms such that they are easily understandable.
  • To prepare further algorithms in such a way that the code is reusable in the Open Source Community.
  • Keep helping others and spreading the word about Open Source :D

With Love
image taken by Mansi Goel

We are so glad to be a part of Rails Girls Summer of Code’16 and Open Source itself and really hope this journey doesn’t end with the Summers. We wish to contribute to the community as much as we can! :)

Follow us at ;)

Twitter
Github

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