We are pleased to announce a two day workshop to introduce best practices in programming to members of DBIOL.

Audience

If you are from DBIOL and the answer to two or more of the following questions is “yes”, then this course is for you.

  • Do you write software to analyze data or implement in-silico models as part of your daily work?
  • Do you write scientific publications based on software you created yourself but do not know what unit testing, refactoring or version control are?
  • Are you writing code that you find hard to understand some weeks later?
  • Do you have thousands of lines of code, but no automated way of verifying that the code works correctly?
  • Do you find yourself regularly using “copy / paste” to re-use code you wrote earlier?
  • Do small changes in your code later cause trouble in other unexpected places?

Location and Dates

The course will happen Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th of January 2019 in IFW C 42, Haldeneggsteig 3, 8006 Zürich (city)

Concept

This workshop will focus on learning and internalizing the practices of unit testing, refactoring, and version control through hands-on experience. The first morning will start with an introduction into these concepts and tools used to support them.

In the afternoon, we will transition to a code clinic and work together in small groups applying these practices to make improvements to code brought by participants. The second day will continue with the code clinic.

The focus of this course is not object-oriented programming, software architecture, design patterns or algorithms. The goal of this course is to introduce skills and techniques for effectively developing software.

Learning objectives

At the end of the workshop, you should be able to:

  • Identify and avoid the most common mistakes in the process of writing software in a scientific context.
  • Improve the quality your code.
  • Exploit techniques for effectively developing software.

Prerequisites

  • You are a member of DBIOL.
  • Working knowledge of one of the following programming languages: Python, C/C++, Java, Matlab, R, JavaScript, Bash/Shell, Mathematica.
  • The code you bring for the code clinic should run withoug major bugs.

Material:

  • Participants should bring their own laptop with a Wifi connection.
  • Participants should send their code at least 2 weeks before the course Application.

Location and Dates

The course will happen Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th of January 2019 in IFW C 42, Haldeneggsteig 3, 8006 Zürich (city). Map

Registration

Please make sure that you carefully read the preceding workshop description carefully. To register please fill out this form

We accept up to 15 attendees and will send you a confirmation email soon after registration.