Big Science == Big Skills Gap

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over on Nature News, Eric Hand's article "'Big science' spurs collaborative trend" is subtitled, "Complicated projects mean that science is becoming more globalized." It talks about the benefits of international collaboration, but what it doesn't say is that sharing ideas, results, procedures, and software requires skills that aren't part of the standard curriculum. One of the main goals of the rewrite of Software Carpentry is to teach scientists some of what they need to know in order to do what Hand describes without heroic effort. I'd be grateful for suggestions about topics and tools that ought to be on the list, but aren't.