Lauren Prox

by Lauren Prox
2020 Unidata summer intern

During the beginning of my internship, I devoted a great deal of time learning how to use Git and Github to collaborate on software development projects. After gaining this experience, I began improving documentation for a variety of Unidata remote repositories. I started with the netCDF-C repository and then moved on to the MetPy, Siphon, and Python Training remote repositories. This work was significant as it ensured that software users were able to locate resources, properly download software, and learn how to operate the software via informational materials.

Aodhan Sweeney

by Aodhan Sweeney
2019 Unidata summer intern

This summer at Unidata I worked on expanding functionality for both the netCDF C++ library and the Python data access tool Siphon. Previously, the netCDF C++ library was lacking important functionality that was included in other netCDF libraries. Fortunately, adding this functionality is a straightforward process. I created function wrappers in the C++ library that would call previously made functions in the C library. This allows those working in a C++ framework to continue to use the netCDF libraries without sacrificing additional functionality.

This week learn how to get weather buoy data with the latest release of the siphon package!

By Joshua Clark

Editor's note: Josh Clark was a Unidata Summer Intern in 2015. He graduated from the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) in the spring of 2015 with a B.S. in Meteorology, and is headed to the graduate program at San Jose State's Fire Weather Research Lab starting in the Fall of 2015.

An example EdexPy interface (click to enlarge)

It is hard to believe my time here at Unidata has come and gone so quickly! Next week, I imagine it will be back to the “harsh” reality of being a student — sitting on a beach somewhere near Monterey or perhaps fly fishing the Sierras over the next twenty days awaiting the start of my first year of graduate school at San Jose State. What a terrible reality that will be!

This experience at Unidata and UCAR has been an incredible opportunity and I am privileged to have been afforded these ten weeks. When I started here, I envisioned an entirely different internship than what previous interns had completed. Rather than developing one particular project, I focused my time on gaining a greater understanding of software engineering as a whole and contributing to existing Unidata projects. I found a comfortable spot working with Unidata Python developers Ryan May and Sean Arms, and within one week I had learned a great deal about unit testing, code health, automated testing, and version control. Later, I would implement these principles in my first Python library, MesoPy.