Software skills are vital to research

9 June 2021 - Festival of Doctoral Research           @sjh5000     ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195

By Simon Hettrick

How it used to be

In the beginning...

Vive la révolution!

Zeitgeists!

And it's not just the zeitgeists...

These slides: https://bit.ly/2TEdGWU

Research software is any software that is used to generate, process or analyse results that you intend to appear in a publication.

 

It can be anything from a few lines of code written by yourself, to a professionally developed software package.

"Not at all"

"Vital"

Software in publications

65%

31 UK institutions ~ 600k papers

Reliability

+

Reproducibility

Who writes all the software?

These slides: https://bit.ly/2TEdGWU

...PhDs and Postdocs

www.society-rse.org

https://rsgsoton.net/

The Carpentries

These slides: https://bit.ly/2TEdGWU

https://carpentries.org

"The Carpentries teach researchers the computing skills they need to get more done in less time and with less pain"

  • ~40 learners per workshop

  • 4 modules over two days

  • Instructor led

  • Hands on training

  • Helpers provide on the spot help

  • Typically held every six months

Overview

What we teach

These slides: https://bit.ly/2TEdGWU

Version control

Command line

#! /bin/bash

#Initialise a counter
count=1

#Make new dir
mkdir NewImgDir

#Loop through file, copy and rename
for i in *.jpg
  do
    cp $i NewImgDir/"EventPhoto_"$count".jpg"
    count=$(( count + 1 ))
  done

Better spreadsheets

  • Software is fundamental to all disciplines of research

  • Software skills will allow you to work faster, more reliably and with less boredom

  • We provide access to training and support to help you in your research

Sign up for training: https://bit.ly/3fYuBfx

Thank you!

@sjh5000

ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195

Licence

 © Simon Hettrick

These slides are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International 

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

These slides: https://bit.ly/2TEdGWU

Picture credits

Where not stated on image:


Big data - Tumisu

Blockchain - mmi19

Cloud computing - Pete Linforth

Cybersecurity - Darwin Laganzon

DNA - Gerd Altman

IBM PC - Ruben de Rijcke

IOT - jeferrb

Machine Learning - Gordon Johnson