Greg Wilson
start where you are - use what you have - help who you can
Co-founder and first Executive Director of Software Carpentry
Co-founder of It Will Never Work in Theory
and The Architecture of Open Source Applications
ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator of the Year
Co-winner of the Jolt Award for Beautiful Code
Fellow of the Python Software Foundation
Ph.D. in Computer Science, the University of Edinburgh
Author, co-author, or editor of 14 books on programming and two for children
…more
Recent Posts
| Date | Title |
|---|---|
| 2026-05-17 | Not So Selfish After All |
| 2026-05-17 | Bullshit Jobs and Parkinson's Law |
| 2026-05-17 | The Expanding Circle |
| 2026-05-17 | The Creation of Money |
| 2026-05-17 | In a Crisis |
…read them all or follow me on Mastodon
Projects and Books
The Carpentries
A non-profit organization teaching basic software and data skills to researchers world-wide (1998–present).
It Will Never Work in Theory
Brief reviews for working programmers of empirical results in software engineering (2011–2023).
Software Design by Example in Python
Two dozen worked examples that teach software design by showing how to build the tools that programmers use every day using Python (2024).
Software Design by Example in JavaScript
Twenty worked examples that teach software design by showing how to build the tools that programmers use every day using JavaScript (2022).
Research Software Engineering with Python
A textbook on building research software and running research software projects (2021).
JavaScript for Data Science
An introduction to JavaScript and web programming for data scientists (2020).
Teaching Tech Together
An introduction to evidence-based teaching for people with technical backgrounds (2019).
The Architecture of Open Source Applications
A collection of essays describing the architectures of fifty open source projects (2011–12).
Organizational Change
This workshop is a short introduction to organizational change for people with backgrounds in research.
Closing Time
This workshop is a short introduction to winding down research and software projects, either deliberately or on short notice.
Introduction to SQL
A one-day introduction to the basics of SQL.
Distributed Systems Design by Example
Thirteen worked examples of distributed systems in Python (beta).
Unbreaking Software
An example-driven tutorial on finding and fixing bugs in software (beta).
Learning Web Programming with LLMs
A short introduction to web programming using LLMs as a teaching aid (alpha).
Learning Data Science with LLMs
A short introduction to data science using LLMs as a teaching aid (alpha).
Research Software Testing by Example
Thirty-one short examples that explore how to test research software (alpha).
Managing Research Software Projects
The ideas and tools you need to manage a team of research software developers (alpha).
Data Science for Software Engineers
What software engineers need to understand to tell good studies from bad ones (alpha).