The big picture

Why emphasize that software development in science is big-picture important? How are the resources available to developers described here?

How is TaxonWorks supporting developer contributions?

A project the nature of TaxonWorks needs contributions from many people to succeed over the long term. To that end we're working hard to build a foundation that permits and encourages anyone to contribute to the project. Highlights include:

• All elements of the project are open source.
• Example meta-projects exist, for example taxonowrks_stats (demo) illustrating how to build an application off of the API
• Code generators let you stub a new task view (core feature) or batch-loader in a single line.
• TaxonWorks is built on Rails. The conventions there acts a wrapper around features that can be written in Ruby or other frameworks like Vue, or other webpack supported frameworks.
• TaxonWorks is extensively unit tested. This means you can code and contribute with a lot less fear of breaking things.
• TaxonWorks is deployed in production in Kubernetes, cutting edge application deployment and management software.
• The Species File Group and its members have held hackathons and many in-house joint workshops. Contact them if you're interested in participating on site. They are also interested in supporting visits to would-be developers, students, or others wishing to get a bootcamp in TaxonWorks development.
• Docker images let you build against the API in your own JavaScript framework with extremely minimal setup.