Instructors: Stefano Cozzini, Justin Ely

What: Our goal is to help scientists and engineers become more productive by teaching them basic computing skills like program design, version control, testing, and task automation. In this two-day bootcamp, short tutorials will alternate with hands-on practical exercises. Participants will be encouraged both to help one another, and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems during and between sessions. Attendants are offered online office hours: regular events to get one-on-one help from Software Carpentry instructors, online.

Who: The course is aimed at postgraduate students and other scientists who are familiar with basic programming concepts (like loops, conditionals, arrays, and functions) but need help to translate this knowledge into practical tools to help them work more productively.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a few specific software packages installed. (The list will be sent to participants a week before the bootcamp.)

Content: On the first day of the bootcamp we will cover:

• Unix shell
  • Finding help
  • Basic commands for manipulating files and directories
  • Piping and redirecting output
  • Using 'history' and shell scripts to repeat and automate work
  • Downloading data from a public server using curl
• Regular expressions
  • Finding help
  • General introduction
  • Re-organizing data
  • Using regular expressions with the shell
• R
  • Finding help
  • Loading data
  • Vectors, Matrices
  • Applying inbuilt functions
  • Creating figures

At the end of day one you will be able to download data from the web using the shell, re-organize it with regular expressions, load it into R, perform some calculations and produce a figure with R.

On the second day we will cover:

• Python
  • Finding help
  • Starting a script
  • Basic mechanics: assignment, lists, loops, conditionals, file I/O
  • Libraries and dictionaries
  • How/when/why to create functions
  • Using Pandas (an R-like package) to manipulate and analyze data
  • Using Matplotlib to generate a figure

At the end of day two you will be able to write a Python script that conducts all of the tasks of day one in one go.

Laptops: Participants are required to bring their own laptop, as the boot camp involves a mixture of lectures and hands on exercises. The lecture theatre has desk facilities where you can plug in and charge. If you don't have a laptop, don't stress, we'll pair you up with someone who does.

Contact: Please mail for more information.