The First Bootcamp of 2012

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We just wrapped up the first bootcamp of 2012 at the Space Telescope Science Institute. 14 scientists with a wide variety of computational backgrounds spent two days learning about testing, version control, program structure, the basics of Python, and the psychology of learning and programming. We're following up with 6 weeks of online material, partly because that's what fits everyone's schedules, and partly to see whether a blended approach works better than either strategy on its own.

And on a completely different topic, this diagram from the Discover magazine web site sums up every scientist-vs-journalist debate ever: