Reflections on my Progress

When we first developed our timeline, we were conservative in our estimate of how many issues we could tackle within Jupyter Notebook. We noticed that bugs in the project get fixed very quickly, so we were worried bugs we worked on would be finished by someone else. We are now ahead of schedule because of this.  For our next task, we have decided to tackle adding a file upload activity indicator:

https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/issues/3139

Right now, the user does not get any feedback when they are uploading a file. The user has no way of knowing the program is doing what its supposed to. Our task is to add this feedback. We have discussed a few different approaches to accomplish this. One approach is a loading bar. This would provide the most feedback to the user since they would get a visual of the progress the program is making. However, this would be difficult for us to implement due to the involvement of graphics and our lack of knowledge of the components that upload the files. We would have to find or create the graphics to create a loading bar. We would have to thoroughly understand the process the program goes through to upload files to be able to properly represent its progress visually. Because of these foreseen difficulties, this will not be our first approach. Instead will will start with a simple text box message that appears when the file starts uploading and disappears when its finished.

This bugs me

6.4 Find the oldest bug that’s still open in your chosen project. Write a blog entry describing the problem, with a theory about why the bug hasn’t been resolved yet. (Bonus points if you can actually resolve the bug.)

https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/issues/56

Jupyter Notebook's oldest open issue was first created on April 28, 2015. It involves creating keyboard shortcuts to simplify help requests involving some called "mimebundles." I do not have a full grasp on the issue since I have no idea what a mimebundle is. It appears that many contributors feel that returning information in a mimebundle would be better suited to program as a whole instead of returning information inline as it does now. Both new and experienced contributors have worked on this issue. It has been edited and updated several times over the years. It was last discussed just a few months ago in December of 2017.

6.5 Figure out how to create a new account on the bug tracker of your chosen project. You’ll need that account very soon.

Jupyter Notebook does not use a specific bug tracker. Instead, they are posted to Github as issues. Issues often do not last longer than a few days, so this system seems to suit the project. However, this can make it difficult to claim a bug since someone else might just fix it before you. We will need to act quickly to be able to contribute to the project. We can also communicate through Gitter and Slack to discuss the project and bugs with other contributors.