Wrapping Up in Oakland

We've wrapped up the workshop in Oakland for folks from NERSC, Berkeley, and Stanford. More later (when I'm home and have slept), but here's the students' feedback. Many thanks to Shreyas Cholia for organizing the workshop, to Michelle Levesque for helping to teach it, and to Elango Cheran and Jorge Aranda for helping out.

Good Bad
  • software strategy
  • Python intro
  • Subversion good!
  • anecdotes (no, really)
  • speed of typing easy to follow
  • connected whole course to pipeline model
  • liked emphasis on programming hygiene
  • liked worked examples
  • incorporated pedagogy
  • agnostic about languages
  • programming philosophy
  • live coding (not PowerPoint)
  • liked learning about SVN
  • learned that some tools exist
  • humor
  • online resources
  • similar environments
  • engagement on first day
  • whole atmosphere of class
  • relating dev to science
  • having people around
  • learning terminology/theory
  • comprehensive set of tools
  • big picture view
  • four topics picked were good
  • free!
  • room was too warm
  • Greg didn't say SVN has branching
  • need more use cases from audience
  • too short
  • Michelle types too fast
  • first three hours slow
  • first three hours too fast
  • Python: too much basic software discussion
  • needed more time to talk to neighbors
  • mention the next step
  • more depth
  • enough rope to hang themselves
  • too few interactive examples
  • room was too small, too
  • more MATLAB
  • advanced students could come later
  • more examples to work on our own
  • engagement on second day
  • more instruction about setup/install
  • hands-on with HDF5 etc.
  • too fast
  • too diverse levels
  • already knew lots of this
  • didn't talk about Silicon Valley
  • wanted a before+after test
  • healthier snacks