Twenty Questions (Minus Two)

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Following up on last week's musings about reorganizing the course, we've drawn up eighteen questions that we think cover the reasons people come to this course. That leaves us two short of the traditional twenty: what would you add to this list?

1. How can I automate this task?
2. How can I read/control hardware?
3. How can I control my program?
4. How do I count things?
5. How can I clean up this data?
6. How can I get insight into my data?
7. How do I track down bugs in my program?
8. How can I parse this legacy data file?
9. How can I save data so that I can read it later?
10. How can I tell if my program is working correctly?
11. How can I make this program easier to use?
12. How can I use remote machines?
13. How can I reuse this legacy program?
14. How can I share my work with others?
15. How can I make my program faster?
16. How can I make my code easier to reuse?
17. How can I keep track of my work?
18. How can I plug my code into a framework like Galaxy or Taverna?