The Mayavi Python software program, and my private historical past: A thread on
Python and scipy ecosystems, constructing open supply codebase, and
assembly actually cool and pleasant individuals
I’m writing at present as a goodbye to the challenge: I was one of many
core contributors and maintainers however have been inactive for some time for
lack of time. Out of widespread settlement, we lately eliminated my commit
rights to restrict safety dangers.
Mayavi introduced my a lot!
The beginning of my journey with Mayavi
I obtained concerned round 2007: I wanted 3D visualization of magnetic fields as I used to be designing coils for my PhD .
I began as an early consumer of Mayavi2, a rewrite of Mayavi, and
ultimately joined Prabhu Ramachandran and Enthought as a contributor.
What’s Mayavi?
Mayavi is a scientific 3D visualization library in Python.
It permits interactive visualization to grasp complicated data in
3D, equivalent to multi-physics fields, mixed with easy scripting to combine in a
broader scientific computing move.
Mayavi was designed and based round 2000 by Prabhu Ramachandran, a
researcher in computational fluid dynamics at IIT Bombay and long-time
open-source and Python determine.
The important thing thought was to make VTK, a strong C++ visualization library,
simply helpful with a Python interface.
Mayavi bridged the hole between the C++ knowledge constructions, and environment friendly Python knowledge constructions, exposing with out copies to numpy arrays.
It makes use of instruments from Enthought (particularly the entought instrument suite) for an
interactive GUI constructed on a Python object mannequin: totally scriptable (the
imaginative and prescient in defined in an article Prabhu and I wrote )
Mayavi is a full-blown interactive software
Mayavi can be a Python library, for full scripting
Engaged on Mayavi taught me code and communities
Mayavi used inside an interactive IPython – a picture from the
Mayavi paper
I joined to assist with the “mlab” interface, for even easier Python
scripting constructed upon capabilities. My objective was to make Mayavi pure to
matlab and matplotlib customers, a product imaginative and prescient which was in all probability
essential to push recognition even additional.
I used to be an remoted PhD scholar in a physics lab, emboldened by a
dialogue with Fernando Perez, I began contributing and discussing
with Prabhu Ramanchandran. I bear in mind my first skype dialogue with
Prabhu, I used to be very intimidated.
Understanding this huge codebase was arduous! And but, slowly however absolutely, I
began making increasingly more significant contribution: on mlab, than on
the broader codbase, fixing bugs, plenty of work on documentation and
examples…
Then Enthought funded my abroad journey to the scipy convention: a giant
deal for me, as I used to be a peniless PhD scholar.
My Mayavi story is that of assembly superb individuals within the Python, scipy,
and pydata world; individuals who imagine in constructing a instrument stack to
democratize scientific computing; individuals from everywhere in the world,
pleasant, welcoming, passionate.
It based my perception in communities.
This journey led me to study software program engineering (Software program carpentry actually helped getting began) to
work at Enthought (a software program startup central to scientific computing in
Python), to alter profession from physics to computing, be part of Inria (French
nationwide analysis in maths and computing), and I do different open supply
initiatives…
Mayavi was essential to my private journey. Thanks Prabhu! Thanks
Enthought! Thanks the Scipy neighborhood!!
