The Hacker Within

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I got back to Toronto late last night from visiting The Hacker Within, a grassroots student organization at the University of Wisconsin — Madison that helps science and engineering students figure out how to use computing in their research. I think it's a great model for schools elsewhere to adopt, and despite truly awful "service" from Delta Airlines [1], it was worth going down to chat with Katy, Nico, Paul, and everyone else, and to see a large auditorium filled with people (80? more?) learning how version control, the shell, Doxygen, and other tools can make them more productive researchers. And as a bonus, I can now take "sleep in a frat house" off my list of 1000 things to do before I die... :-)

[1] Check out @gvwilson + #delta on Twitter for the blow-by-blow.