<div dir="auto"><div>Thank you for the expansive list. I guess I will start by going through the tutorial to look for errors. Testing does look like the best way to get to know the code base.<br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Jul 17, 2017 3:21 AM, "Peter Cock" <<a href="mailto:p.j.a.cock@googlemail.com">p.j.a.cock@googlemail.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi Jennifer,<br>
<br>
Hello and welcome.<br>
<br>
You certainly could help out even with minimal biological<br>
knowledge. Where you might best help will depend on<br>
your interests and experience.<br>
<br>
If you have particular experience with the joys of unicode<br>
encodings, recently we've found a few more problems<br>
lurking in our code tests only exposed under unusual<br>
locales, where real world data files have non-ASCII<br>
characters (usually people's names):<br>
<br>
<a href="https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/1321" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/biopython/<wbr>biopython/issues/1321</a><br>
<a href="https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/1320" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/biopython/<wbr>biopython/issues/1320</a><br>
<br>
One practical option would be working though the tutorial<br>
with the latest Biopython and flagging any code snippets<br>
which don't work, or typos. That would also give you some<br>
idea of the breadth of the code base (although not all of<br>
Biopython is covered in the Tutorial).<br>
<br>
There are also on going efforts to better follow the PEP8<br>
and PEP257 standards (although we don't want to break<br>
backwards compatibility so things like existing mixed<br>
case module names persist).<br>
<br>
<a href="https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/1170" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/biopython/<wbr>biopython/issues/1170</a><br>
<br>
Related to that, we're also slowly getting our docstrings<br>
into proper RST markup, with a view to replacing epydoc<br>
with something more modern for making the API docs:<br>
<br>
<a href="https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/1221" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/biopython/<wbr>biopython/issues/1221</a><br>
<a href="https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/906" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/biopython/<wbr>biopython/issues/906</a><br>
<br>
Right now I've been working on compiled wheel files<br>
to help with Biopython installation - with that done we<br>
should review all our installation instructions, refocusing<br>
some of the compiler centric material for developers<br>
only etc,<br>
<br>
<a href="https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/1296" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/biopython/<wbr>biopython/issues/1296</a><br>
<a href="https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/1295" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/biopython/<wbr>biopython/issues/1295</a><br>
<br>
Note we're asking all new contributors to dual license<br>
their contributions under both the Biopython License<br>
Agreement and the BSD 3-Clause License:<br>
<br>
<a href="https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/898" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/biopython/<wbr>biopython/issues/898</a><br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
<br>
Peter<br>
<div class="elided-text"><br>
On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 1:45 AM, Jennifer Sweezey <<a href="mailto:jen@jensweezey.com">jen@jensweezey.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> I am a Python developer with an M.S and 7+ yrs of experience in software<br>
> design\management. I find bioinformatics and genomics fascinating and really<br>
> want to get involved but I have no biology background whatsoever. Can I<br>
> really contribute to a project like BioPython without the requisite bio<br>
> background?  If so, where do I start?<br>
><br>
> Thanks!<br>
><br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div></div></div>