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Wrapping Up MBARI Workshop

· 28 March, 2012

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Software Carpentry

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Steve "Jellyfish" Haddock and Greg Wilson taught a two-day workshop at MBARI this week. It seemed to go well: feedback is below.

Good

Bad

used specific, concrete examples
hands on
good breadth
knowing the tools exist
seeing the Power of Pipes
seeing how to use version control for traceability
insistence that prior experience wasn't necessary
the Power of Python (!!!)
liked the Power of Databases
saw background of databases
now understand how much more efficient is possible
stories are entertaining
starting from scratch helpful
databases may not be completely useless
liked having things online after day 1
great motivational speaker
emphasis on commonality/interoperability
liked provenance
web site
linked coding/learning
introduced things to use *with* Python
content was fairly conceptual
clean code from the beginning
drawing parallels between Python and MATLAB
including version numbers (provenance)
forced to learn my Mac
being allowed to talk to neighbors
"programming is meaningless" is good
prepared pedagogy, not material
I feel like I'm a better programmer
great going over Unix stuff

some things were too fast (esp. day 2)
instructor wanders
more practice time
instructor types too fast
wanted two screens at once
switching between Python and shell confusing
more time on switching between screens
follow instructor or take notes but not both
handout please!
not enough hands-on practice
not knowing how to get data into database
can't keep track with multiple Python files
didn't explain regular expressions
lack of hands-on
more data manipulation
not enough time
shorter, more frequent breaks
download folder of examples
can't do it all in two days
confused with version control
accelerated toward the end
don't know how to use database in research
advance materials
show up early for setup
say "meaningless" first
sys.argv etc. not covered