{"id":5324,"date":"2014-01-28T17:08:24","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T16:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=5324"},"modified":"2014-01-28T17:14:33","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T16:14:33","slug":"first-ever-matlab-based-software-carpentry-boot-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=5324","title":{"rendered":"First ever MATLAB-based Software Carpentry boot camp"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is Software Carpentry?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Software Carpentry boot-camps<\/a> aim to ensure that researchers have a working knowledge of several useful technologies from \u00a0the world of software development. \u00a0Concepts such as version control<\/a>, unit-testing<\/a>, task-automation<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0modular programming<\/a>\u00a0 are bread and butter to full time software-developers but are often completely unknown to many researchers; researchers who are nevertheless expected to develop computer code as part of their research output.<\/p>\n

An in-depth education in all of these technologies can take a lot of time; time that many researchers simply can’t spare. Fortunately, however, it is possible to learn just enough to completely transform the quality of your workflow in a relatively short amount of time. \u00a0Software Carpentry boot camps aim to lay the foundations in around two days.<\/p>\n

Software Carpentry…but in MATLAB<\/strong><\/p>\n

Traditionally, these bootcamps are taught using open-source languages such as Python<\/a> or R<\/a> but many proprietary\u00a0languages are also used in academia such as \u00a0MATLAB, IDL, Mathematica and Maple to name but a few. In the most recent version of MATLAB, Mathworks introduced a unit testing framework<\/a> and so now seemed like a good time to try out Software Carpentry in MATLAB.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday 14th January I hosted the first ever MATLAB-based Software Carpentry bootcamp<\/a> in conjunction with The Software Sustainability Institute<\/a> (of which I am a 2013 fellow<\/a>) and Mathworks<\/a>. Held at The University of Manchester<\/a>, this two-day event gave free software development instruction to researchers from a wide variety of disciplines and, if the feedback forms are to be believed, was a resounding success.<\/p>\n

Shoaib Sufi and Aleksandra Pawlik of the Software Sustainability Institute taught material on bash shell scripting and git version control respectively with Ken Deeley of Mathworks providing MATLAB instruction. \u00a0I, along with Mathworks’ Jos Martin and Juan Martinez, acted as the less-than-glamourous but ever-helpful classroom assistants.<\/p>\n

Fun and games with BYOD – Licensing<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the decade or so that I’ve been teaching programming, I’ve done so in fully equipped teaching labs containing row upon row of identical computers where each have all the required software pre-installed. \u00a0For this event, we decided to try a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach..i.e. students bring their own, personal laptops and we provided a list of required software that needed to be installed for the event. \u00a0Since Manchester’s MATLAB site license is network-based only and does not allow students to install on personally owned equipment, Mathworks kindly supplied standalone trial licenses for all course attendees.<\/p>\n

BYOD has a number of benefits for the student and, in my mind at least, the most important of these benefits is that students are left with a fully working development environment after the course. \u00a0This means that they can start applying their new skills immediately after leaving the course which hopefully leads to them being used ‘in anger’ on their research projects. \u00a0Since the students were only supplied with trial licenses, this was not to be the case with MATLAB. \u00a0They will have to switch to using their on-campus machines or purchase their own copy of ‘standalone’ MATLAB in order to continue working.<\/p>\n

Availability of software is not something that usually concerns an organiser of a Software Carpentry boot camp since the likes of Python and R are available everywhere for free. \u00a0When using a proprietary language such as MATLAB, however, it’s very much of an issue and I’d advise any future organiser of a MATLAB boot camp to carefully consider this before proceeding. \u00a0Of course this isn’t just true of MATLAB, it’s true of any proprietary language one may choose. \u00a0It will also be less of a problem if your institution has an all you can eat, ‘Total Academic Headcount’ \u00a0unlimited site license.<\/p>\n

Fun and games with BYOD – switches and glitches<\/strong><\/p>\n

All three major desktop operating systems were represented in the laptops of the 20 or so students — something that occasionally made for fun times. \u00a0Here is a list of some of the minor issues that arose over the two days<\/p>\n