{"id":6147,"date":"2016-07-06T10:04:17","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T09:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=6147"},"modified":"2016-07-07T07:06:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T06:06:07","slug":"dagstuhl-seminar-engineering-academic-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=6147","title":{"rendered":"Dagstuhl Seminar : Engineering Academic Software"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I was recently invited to a Schloss Dagstuhl<\/a>\u00a0Workshop on ‘Engineering Academic Software’ by organisers\u00a0Carole Goble<\/a>,\u00a0James Howison<\/a>,\u00a0Claude Kirchner<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Oscar M. Nierstrasz<\/a>. One week of geeking-out with research software people from all over the world in lovely surroundings with as much beer and cheese as you can eat — sounds good to me!<\/p>\n

I gave a presentation about life on the frontline of Research Software Engineering support or the RSE Accident and Emergency<\/a> department as I sometimes think of it. I spent some time discussing Sheffield’s new Research Software Engineering group<\/a> formed by Paul Richmond and me off the back of our EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellowships<\/a>. I also discussed a worrying trend I’ve noticed in research software — top people are leaving academia for industry, not because they want to but because of a lack of support! Slides for my talk are at https:\/\/mikecroucher.github.io\/dagstuhl_RSE_Sheffield\/#\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Highlights<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love attending seminars like this because I get to learn about all of the wonderful things that the community is up to. \u00a0Personal highlights included:<\/p>\n

Effective computation in physics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meeting Katy Huff<\/a>, co-author of my favourite Python book, Effective computation in physics<\/a>. The only problem with this book is the word ‘physics’ in the title since it suggests that it’s only useful if you are a physicist. Totally not the case! If you are doing science in Python, get this book!<\/strong> Fellow blogger John D Cook, interviewed both authors of the book back in 2015 – see the write-up at\u00a0http:\/\/www.johndcook.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/08\/effective-computation-in-physics\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Nth picture of @katyhuff<\/a> with her book on Python! But this time it’s the special signed #dagstuhleas<\/a> 2016 Edition pic.twitter.com\/FG8O4nOLSR<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 d(-.-)b (@katerererena) June 23, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Software Heritage<\/strong><\/p>\n

Learning about the Software Heritage project<\/a> that launched very recently. The project harvests and archives projects from various locations\u00a0— github, Debian and the GNU Project for now. They say that ‘we preserve software, because it contains our technical and scientific knowledge<\/strong>.’ It’s shaping up to be a ‘Library of Alexandria of Software’.\u00a0<\/strong>The full mission statement is over at\u00a0https:\/\/www.softwareheritage.org\/mission\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"software_heritage\"<\/a><\/p>\n