This weekend (September 26 & 27), I will be partaking in my first Software Carpentry bootcamp, held right here at ASU. I will be helping with some of the sessions myself, but otherwise I look forward to learning some R and SQL skills with some like-minded peers.

For the uninitiated, Software Carpentry is an organization that actively works to improve the computational, programming, and data analysis skills of scientists. This is more than necessary, because though science often pushes the boundaries of what computing can accomplish, good software practices are relatively rare among scientists. Version control, code readability, and software design is becoming increasingly important as the complexity of computational science increases.

I’ll post about my experiences after having attended the two-day bootcamp. If you are interested in attending yourself, register here. It should be a good time!

— david