I've been enjoying observing the Astropy mailing list, the two main threads that have interested me are about NDData with LSST and the freezing of features in preparation for the next Astropy version's release. The conversation with NDData and LSST has gone into if/why backwards compatibility is needed in certain parts of NDData and if that outweighs the benefits of having code that is compatible with the needs of LSST. The conversation has also gone over what other methods LSST could use that would satisfy their needs without requiring fundamental changes to NDData. With the feature freeze there is a lot of talk about the process of adding to and maintaining Astropy and the tests that features have to pass before they can be added to the main Astropy package. It also gives an interesting look into the development cycle of a Python package, how for a release each part of it has to be fully functional and consider the changes that have been made to the rest of the code base in the case that a function has been changed in a way that is not backwards-compatible.
Another cool part has been watching the Facebook group created by and for this year's GSoC interns. The community is very open and willing to help on coding as well as meet up with other local interns.
Related to my project, I've been looking through the current code and documentation for Astroplan for what I can use and add to during my project.
Hi Karl. Glad you are working on this project. We plan on some pretty extensive astroplan use and were involved a little with helping out last year. I'm happy to contribute some work as well as we have certain features we would like to see. I'll follow along at the blog. Looking forward to your work!
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