On Windows laptops, you will need to install two applications:
- Git for Windows and
- Anaconda.
March 19-20 2020
9:00 - 17:00
Instructors: Jarno Rantaharju, João M. da Silva, Juho Lehtonen
Helpers: Samantha Wittke
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic, we have decided to cancel the Software Carpentry event on March 19-20 2020. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.
While we plan to run the event at a later date, we will decide on an exact time once the situation becomes more clear.
In the meantime, all the materials for the course are available online and we encourage you to take the extra time to study them. If you do decide to self-study, the etherpad at https://pad.carpentries.org/adguAnQVNp-YGucJhiBH will remain open for you to collaborate.
Jarno will be available for questions on the etherpad on Thursday March 19th and the preceding days.
Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. 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".
Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
Where: Exactum CK107, at Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2, 00560 Helsinki. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.
When: March 19-20 2020. Add to your Google Calendar.
Registration: Registration is unfortunately closed. You can sign up to a waiting list at https://indico.neic.no/event/113/registrations. You can also check out other Software Carpentry and related events at the Software Carpentry site. Also check out the similar 3-day workshops organized by CodeRefinery.
Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.). It should either be administered by the University of Helsinki or the participant should have administrative privileges on it. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).
Code of Conduct: Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.
Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody.
Materials will be provided in advance of the workshop and large-print handouts are available if needed by notifying the organizers in advance. If we can help making learning easier for you (e.g. sign-language interpreters, lactation facilities) please get in touch (using contact details below) and we will attempt to provide them.
Contact: Please email jarno.rantaharju@helsinki.fi for more information.
Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.
Before | Pre-workshop survey |
09:00 | Automating Tasks with the Unix Shell |
10:30 | Morning break |
11:00 | Automating Tasks with the Unix Shell (Continued) |
12:00 | Lunch break |
13:00 | Building Programs with Python |
14:30 | Afternoon break |
15:00 | Building Programs with Python (Continued) |
16:00 | Wrap-up |
16:30 | END |
09:00 | Version Control with Git |
10:30 | Morning break |
11:00 | Version Control with Git (Continued) |
12:00 | Lunch break |
13:00 | Building Programs with Python (Continued) |
14:30 | Afternoon break |
15:00 | Building Programs with Python (Continued) |
16:00 | Wrap-up |
16:30 | Post-workshop Survey |
16:40 | END |
add
, commit
, ...status
, diff
, ...clone
, pull
, push
, ...To participate in a Software Carpentry workshop, you will need access to the software described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.
We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.
If you have a laptop administered by the University of Helsinki, you can use the Software Center to install the required applications.
On Windows laptops, you will need to install two applications:
On MacOS, you can install Git through the App store. Please contact the Helpdesk (helpdesk@helsinki.fi) to install Anaconda.
Cubbli Linux comes with all required software pre-installed.
Bash is a commonly-used shell that gives you the power to do simple tasks more quickly.
cmd
and press [Enter])setx HOME "%USERPROFILE%"
SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.
exit
then pressing [Enter]This will provide you with both Git and Bash in the Git Bash program.
The default shell in all versions of macOS is Bash, so no
need to install anything. You access Bash from the Terminal
(found in
/Applications/Utilities
).
See the Git installation video tutorial
for an example on how to open the Terminal.
You may want to keep
Terminal in your dock for this workshop.
The default shell is usually Bash, but if your
machine is set up differently you can run it by opening a
terminal and typing bash
. There is no need to
install anything.
Git is a version control system that lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com. You will need a supported web browser.
You will need an account at github.com for parts of the Git lesson. Basic GitHub accounts are free. We encourage you to create a GitHub account if you don't have one already. Please consider what personal information you'd like to reveal. For example, you may want to review these instructions for keeping your email address private provided at GitHub.
Git should be installed on your computer as part of your Bash install (described above).
For OS X 10.9 and higher, install Git for Mac
by downloading and running the most recent "mavericks" installer from
this list.
Because this installer is not signed by the developer, you may have to
right click (control click) on the .pkg file, click Open, and click
Open on the pop up window.
After installing Git, there will not be anything in your /Applications
folder,
as Git is a command line program.
For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.8) use the
most recent available installer labelled "snow-leopard"
available here.
If Git is not already available on your machine you can try to
install it via your distro's package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu run
sudo apt-get install git
and for Fedora run
sudo dnf install git
.
When you're writing code, it's nice to have a text editor that is optimized for writing code, with features like automatic color-coding of key words. The default text editor on macOS and Linux is usually set to Vim, which is not famous for being intuitive. If you accidentally find yourself stuck in it, hit the Esc key, followed by :+Q+! (colon, lower-case 'q', exclamation mark), then hitting Return to return to the shell.
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. It is installed along with Git.
Others editors that you can use are Notepad++ or Sublime Text. Be aware that you must add its installation directory to your system path. Please ask your instructor to help you do this.
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. See the Git installation video tutorial for an example on how to open nano. It should be pre-installed.
Others editors that you can use are BBEdit or Sublime Text.
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. It should be pre-installed.
Others editors that you can use are Gedit, Kate or Sublime Text.
Python is a popular language for research computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. Installing all of its research packages individually can be a bit difficult, so we recommend Anaconda, an all-in-one installer.
Regardless of how you choose to install it, please make sure you install Python version 3.x (e.g., 3.6 is fine).
We will teach Python using the Jupyter notebook, a programming environment that runs in a web browser. For this to work you will need a reasonably up-to-date browser. The current versions of the Chrome, Safari and Firefox browsers are all supported (some older browsers, including Internet Explorer version 9 and below, are not).
bash Anaconda3-and then press Tab. The name of the file you just downloaded should appear. If it does not, navigate to the folder where you downloaded the file, for example with:
cd DownloadsThen, try again.
yes
and
press enter to approve the license. Press enter to approve the
default location for the files. Type yes
and
press enter to prepend Anaconda to your PATH
(this makes the Anaconda distribution the default Python).