23.2.12

Software Carpentry

An article in this weeks edition of Nature on providing source code for journal articles that depend on new or original computer programs to analyze data (link) led to the discovery of two new resources:

1 - An article on scientists ability to write code (link)

2 - An actual course focused on teaching scientists how to write computer code, known as "Software Carpentry". The materials for the course are posted on-line, with full lecture content, as well as videos. If all you have is a basic introduction to programming, this might be useful.

My own programming experience, I have one intro to programming course from my Masters, and then did a lot of Matlab programming during my PhD (including GUI development), and then learned R, object-oriented and R packages during my PostDoc, and I think I am going to work through this course. I have finally been implementing unit-tests and using version control, but I am sure there are lessons to be learned from this course.

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