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Virginia Tech

Oct 12-13, 2015

9:00 am - 4:30 pm

Instructors: Daniel Chen, Zhuo Fu

Helpers: Alana Romanella, James McClure, Justin Krometis, Brian Marshall, Abby Khanal, Srijith Rajamohan

General Information

Who: The course is aimed at graduate students, faculty, and other researchers.

Where: Torgersen Hall Room 1100. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with VirtualBox installed and our VM image loaded (listed below). They are also required to abide by Software Carpentry's Code of Conduct.

Contact: Please mail Alana Romanella (aromanel@vt.edu) for more information.


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".

Python Day 1 Material

Schedule

Day 1

09:00 Automating tasks with the Unix shell
10:30 Coffee
10:45 Intro to Python
12:00 Lunch break
13:00 Building programs with Python
14:30 Coffee
16:00 Wrap-up

Day 2

09:00 Version control with Git
10:30 Coffee
12:00 Lunch break
13:00 Testing Programs in Python
14:30 Coffee
16:00 Wrap-up

Etherpad: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/2015-10-12-VirginiaTech.
We will use this Etherpad for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.


Syllabus

The Unix Shell

  • Files and directories
  • History and tab completion
  • Pipes and redirection
  • Looping over files
  • Creating and running shell scripts
  • Finding things
  • Reference...

Programming in Python

  • Using libraries
  • Working with arrays
  • Reading and plotting data
  • Creating and using functions
  • Loops and conditionals
  • Defensive programming
  • Using Python from the command line
  • Reference...

Version Control with Git

  • Creating a repository
  • Recording changes to files: add, commit, ...
  • Viewing changes: status, diff, ...
  • Ignoring files
  • Working on the web: clone, pull, push, ...
  • Resolving conflicts
  • Open licenses
  • Where to host work, and why
  • Reference...

Setup

To participate in a Software Carpentry workshop, you will need to install VirtualBox and load our VM image to your VirtualBox:

  1. Install VirtualBox.
  2. Download our VM image. Warning: this file is 1.7 GByte, so please download it before coming to your workshop.
  3. Load the VM into VirtualBox by selecting "Import Appliance" and loading the .ova file.