Jan 7-8, 2016
9:00 am - 4:30 pm
Instructors: David Dotson, Rachel Schwartz
Helpers: Ian Kenney, Avishek Kumar, Abhijith Rajan, Mahdi Sadjadi
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 for Physics graduate students and undergraduates involved in research will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, 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 Physics graduate students and other students involved in research. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
Where: Bateman Physical Sciences H-Wing, PSH 356. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps. Guest parking at $5 per day can be found in Lot 57 just north of campus. From this lot head south to the University Drive crosswalk, and PSH will be to your right. You can enter the building through the large breezeway facing University Drive. Room 356 is on the third floor, just east of the elevators.
Requirements: Participants must bring photo ID and a laptop with a few specific software packages installed (listed below). They are also required to abide by Software Carpentry's Code of Conduct.
Contact: Please mail vfaghirh@asu.edu for more information.
08:45, Arrival | Pre-workshop Survey |
09:00 | Automating tasks with the Unix shell |
10:30 | Coffee |
12:00 | Lunch break |
13:00 | Building programs with Python |
14:30 | Coffee |
16:00 | Wrap-up |
09:00 | Python continued |
10:30 | Coffee |
12:00 | Lunch break |
13:00 | Version control with Git |
14:30 | Coffee |
16:00 | Wrap-up |
Dismissal | Post-workshop Survey |
Etherpad: http://pad.software-carpentry.org/2016-01-07_asu_physics.
We will use this Etherpad for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.
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).
Git should be installed on your computer as part of your Bash install (described above).
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.
For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.8) use the
most recent available installer labelled "snow-leopard"
available here.
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
.
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.
Python is a popular language for scientific computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. Installing all of its scientific packages individually can be a bit difficult, so we recommend Anaconda, an all-in-one installer.
Regardless of how you choose to install it, please make sure you install Python version 3.x (e.g., 3.4 is fine).
We will teach Python using the IPython notebook, a programming environment that runs in a web browser. For this to work you will need a reasonably up-to-date browser. The current versions of the Chrome, Safari and Firefox browsers are all supported (some older browsers, including Internet Explorer version 9 and below, are not).
bash Anaconda-and then press tab. The name of the file you just downloaded should appear.
yes
and
press enter to approve the license. Press enter to approve the
default location for the files. Type yes
and
press enter to prepend Anaconda to your PATH
(this makes the Anaconda distribution the default Python).
Once you are done installing the software listed above, please go to this page, which has instructions on how to test that everything was installed correctly.