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CONTRIBUTING.md

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### Contributing

In all honesty as this is a personal project, I don't expect anyone else will 
contribute. Moreso, this began life as a final project for my BSc and thus 
until that is done I must remain the only contributor, lest I have to reference 
everyone else on the paper. This is more an exercise in setting aside reminders 
to myself about how I should approach this.
If however on the offchance somebody does, the following will hopefully help 
guide them to make a good job of it:

A note on comments, both in code and out of it. Firstly plain don't be 
offensive, thats what a code of conduct is for, ensure any comment you make is 
helpful and constructive. Secondly, I once read a really good article on the 
different kinds of comments and how they can be used to be both helpful and 
efficient. Yes, I've also heard the old addage that good code is self 
documenting, in fact I try to write my code like this as if the code can be 
made more obvious without sacrifice, then it should be. However good code is 
not enough, sometimes a good comment can save you half an hour of unnecessary 
confusion, or other times there is no obvious way to write the code and it 
needs some explanation. I will try to find and 
[link that article here](http://antirez.com/news/124) so we can all have a good 
read and be the better coders for it. 
[This article](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) also seems 
useful, though doesn't really fit anywhere.

1. Study and gain a reasonable understanding of the subject matter, the aim of 
the project, and the purpose to be fulfilled.
2. Attempt to make contact with the repository owner. (I appreciate this may be 
hard for those who don't know me personally, but this project is inherently 
personal.)
3. Once you are able, choose a part of the project you can dedicate yourself to 
and provide some valuable insights.
4. You will require an unprotected branch to add your code to, it will most 
likely be easier if you create yourself an individual one. 
5. Be sure to pull in regular updates from the master branch, and keep an eye 
on the files most relevant to your section for any changes.
6. Always try to leave a helpful message with each commit, this makes it easier 
to unpick your code later and make sense of what you did and why.
7. When you believe your code is ready for use, submit a pull request, then sit 
back, relax, and prepare for the "What the hell *is* this garbage?!"
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