The Third Bit

Apologies for falling behind on these updates:

1. An interview with Microsoft’s David Rich
2. The third episode of the regular expressions lecture
3. The fourth episode of ditto
4. A job posting in London, England
5. A three-and-a-half-minute pitch for Software Carpentry
6. A link to a fascinating lecture on genomics by Eric Lander
7. Some musings on small-p patterns
8. A SIAM News article about Software Carpentry
9. The fifth and final episode of the regular expressions lecture
10. The last episode of the lecture on sets & dictionaries (just to mix things up a bit)
11. The violas of programming
12. A pointer to a post by Titus Brown discussing how to combine material from Software Carpentry with other courses — comments would be greatly appreciated
13. A schedule for a one-term run of the course this fall
14. A discussion of the science of learning, and how it impacts the design of the course
15. The first and second episode of the lecture on sets & dictionaries (introducing sets and hash tables respectively)
16. An interview with SciNet’s Daniel Gruner

Software Carpentry

For those who aren’t following along:

1. Testing invasion percolation (June 7)
2. Making invasion percolation faster (June 8 )
3. Reorganizing content (June 9)
4. Interview with Scimatic and a new version of the concept map (June 10)
5. Our introductory database lecture in 8 episodes (also June 10)
6. Thoughts on teaching simple design patterns (June 11)
7. Interviews with SHARCNET and the UK Met Office (also June 11)
8. Measuring the usability of parallel programming systems (June 12)
9. Interview with Queen Mary University of London (June 14)
10. Glossary and license go online (June 15)
11. The first lecture on regular expressions, which is really “is live coding worth it?” (June 16)
12. A question about self-assessment (also June 16)
13. A second try at introducing regular expressions (June 17)
14. The first four episodes of our lecture on spreadsheets (June 18)
15. Our first few self-assessment exercises (also June 18)
16. People you don’t want on your team (June 18 again)
17. Our second lecture on regular expressions (June 19)

Enjoy!

Software Carpentry

The reason this blog has been quiet lately is that I’ve been focusing on getting some Software Carpentry lectures online. I’m pleased to say that the first nine episodes of a lecture on program design are now up, and I’d appreciate your feedback:

1. Introduction
2. The Grid
3. Aliasing
4. Randomness
5. Finding Neighbors
6. Resolving Ties
7. Assembling the Program
8. Bugs
9. Refactoring

I’ve also posted a first draft of a concept map for computational thinking. I’ve complained before that everyone who uses the term means something different by it [1]; this is my attempt to pin down what I mean. Feedback would once again be greatly appreciated.

[1] See, for example, this report on a workshop held earlier this year.

Software Carpentry

It’s been a busy week over at Software Carpentry:

• Screencasts With Point-Form Notes
• Mini-Screencasts
• Exercises (with a screencast)
• A Word (or Three) From Our Sponsors
• Our first Programming Screencast
• Why Most Scientists Don’t Like Computers (I think most programmers don’t either)
• Closed Captioning
• Slides
• We’ll Know We’ve Succeeded If… (a link to Titus Brown’s mock data management plan)
• Evaluating Methods and Protocols

Our current schedule calls for us to have the database, spreadsheet, and version control lectures online by the end of next week. It’s ambitious (particularly given my continuing predilection for procrastination), but I think we have a good chance. If anyone wants to do some freelance graphic design, please let me know…

Software Carpentry

Over on the Software Carpentry blog, I’ve posted links to three trial screencasts. We’d be grateful for your comments: do you like the format? Is the video quality good enough?  Are the transcript and/or notes useful?  Other than adding exercises (which we’re going to try tomorrow and Wednesday), what could we do to make them better?

And while we’re on the subject, what are you favorite technical/training videos? Do you like the PowerPoint slides with inset talking heads of Google Tech Talks?  Or do you prefer screen recordings with voiceover, like this?  How about Common Craft‘s mix of cartoons and stop-motion film?

Software Carpentry

The Software Carpentry blog has moved to http://software-carpentry.org/blog/ — please remove the old softwarecarpentry.wordpress.com entry from your blog reader and follow our progress at the new address. Full-time work starts May 1!

Announcements, Software Carpentry

From the last week and a half:

• Other online courses that Software Carpentry could imitate.
• Feedback on the recently-completed course, with a discussion of how much or how little Software Carpentry should try to accomplish.
• An announcement of Hans-Martin von Gaudecker’s course on computational skills for economists this fall at Universität Mannheim.
• Some discussion about platforms for delivering the course.

Lots of decisions to make in not very much time—as always, feedback and input would be appreciated.

Software Carpentry

Now that Software Carpentry Version 4 is a go, I’ve moved most blogging about scientific software development over to http://softwarecarpentry.wordpress.com. Recent highlights include:

1. You can now follow Software Carpentry’s progress on Twitter as @swcarpentry.
2. I’m helping teach a course on analyzing next-generation sequencing data at Michigan State University at the end of May.
3. Some thoughts on online course delivery.
4. Some more thoughts on instructional design. (These two posts are mostly actually pleas for help.)
5. The announcement that the course bibliography is online.
6. A discussion of what’s missing from that bibliography.
7. My analysis of the pros and cons of various formats for the course material. Much to my own surprise, LaTeX is the frontrunner…

Software Carpentry

I am very excited to announce that I am going to work full-time on revising the Software Carpentry course from May 2010 to May 2011. Please see the full announcement for details.

Announcements, Software Carpentry

Titus Brown and I are running a course May 31-June 11 in Michigan — for details, please see the course web site or my Software Carpentry post.

Announcements, Software Carpentry, Teaching