Apr 15-16, 2016
9:00 am - 4:30 pm
Instructors: Remi Daigle, Julie Stewart Lowndes, Ben Best
Helpers: Jamie Afflerbach, Casey O'Hara, Grant McDermott, Dan Ovando
Software Carpentry's mission is to help scientists and engineers get more research done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic lab skills for scientific computing. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.
For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Best Practices for Scientific Computing".
Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
Where: UCSB Library. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.
Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating sytem (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below). They are also required to abide by Software Carpentry's Code of Conduct.
Contact: Please mail remi.daigle@utoronto.ca for more information.
Surveys
Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.
09:00 | Intro to programming concepts with the Unix shell |
10:30 | Coffee |
12:00 | Lunch break |
13:00 | Intro to R and RStudio |
14:30 | Coffee |
16:00 | Wrap-up |
09:00 | Reproducible workflow and Version control with Git, Github, and R Markdown |
10:30 | Coffee |
12:00 | Lunch break |
13:00 | Data wrangling and visualization in R |
14:30 | Coffee |
16:00 | Wrap-up |
add
, commit
, ...status
, diff
, ...clone
, pull
, push
, ...To participate in a Software Carpentry workshop, you will need access to the software described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.
We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.
Bash is a commonly-used shell that gives you the power to do simple tasks more quickly.
This will provide you with both Git and Bash in the Git Bash program.
The default shell in all versions of Mac OS X is Bash, so no
need to install anything. You access Bash from the Terminal
(found in
/Applications/Utilities
). You may want to keep
Terminal in your dock for this workshop.
The default shell is usually Bash, but if your
machine is set up differently you can run it by opening a
terminal and typing bash
. There is no need to
install anything.
Git is a version control system that lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com. You will need a supported web browser (current versions of Chrome, Firefox or Safari, or Internet Explorer version 9 or above). The Github Desktop app is an easy to use interface for using Git locally and communicating with github.com.
Git should be installed on your computer as part of your Bash install (described above). Also, please install the Github Desktop app.
For OS X 10.9 and higher, install Git for Mac
by downloading and running the most recent "mavericks" installer from
this list.
After installing Git, there will not be anything in your /Applications
folder,
as Git is a command line program. Also, please install the
Github Desktop app.
For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.8) use the
most recent available installer labelled "snow-leopard"
available here. Also, please install the
Github Desktop app.
If Git is not already available on your machine you can try to
install it via your distro's package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu run
sudo apt-get install git
and for Fedora run
sudo yum install git
. Also, please install the
Github Desktop app.
When you're writing code, it's nice to have a text editor that is
optimized for writing code, with features like automatic
color-coding of key words. The default text editor on Mac OS X and
Linux is usually set to Vim, which is not famous for being
intuitive. if you accidentally find yourself stuck in it, try
typing the escape key, followed by :q!
(colon, lower-case 'q',
exclamation mark), then hitting Return to return to the shell.
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. To install it, download the Software Carpentry Windows installer and double click on the file to run it. This installer requires an active internet connection.
Others editors that you can use are Notepad++ or Sublime Text. Be aware that you must add its installation directory to your system path. Please ask your instructor to help you do this.
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. It should be pre-installed.
Others editors that you can use are Text Wrangler or Sublime Text.
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. It should be pre-installed.
Others editors that you can use are Gedit, Kate or Sublime Text.
R is a programming language that is especially powerful for data exploration, visualization, and statistical analysis. To interact with R, we use RStudio.
Install R by downloading and running this .exe file from CRAN. Also, please install the RStudio IDE.
Install R by downloading and running this .pkg file from CRAN. Also, please install the RStudio IDE.
You can download the binary files for your distribution
from CRAN. Or
you can use your package manager (e.g. for Debian/Ubuntu
run sudo apt-get install r-base
and for Fedora run
sudo yum install R
). Also, please install the
RStudio IDE.