Damien Irving on The Carpentries

#Carpentries25 Testimonial Series: Damien Irving

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In July 2023, The Carpentries turned 25 years! On July 24th we launched the #Carpentries25 anniversary celebrations which will continue for the remainder of the year with a series of monthly events and weekly activities highlighting the global and regional contributions and impact of The Carpentries community.

This #Carpentries25 Testimonial Series is one way we will celebrate this milestone, and if you wish to contribute to this testimonial series please find the instructions in the celebrations announcement and reach out to us. Also, be sure to register to receive communications about upcoming monthly regional events.

New book: Research Software Engineering with Python

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Note: This blog post was updated in April 2024 to link to a new version of this book. The corresponding R version is no longer available.

A big part of the Carpentries success is the two-day workshop format, but that hasn’t stopped countless instructors over the years speculating about the great things we could teach if only we had more time. With an entire semester, for instance, you could take researchers through the entire lifecycle of a data analysis project, from the initial setup and code development through to a fully automated data processing pipeline and published software package. A small group of us decided to act on that speculation a few years ago, and set about writing Research Software Engineering with Python. It effectively represents our attempt at lesson materials for a Software Carpentry workshop that runs for the duration of a university semester course.

The Carpentries in Australia: Community Discussion Summary

Tue, 21 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

To coincide with the recent announcement of an official Regional Coordinator for Australia, we held an online community discussion last month.

There was a great turnout for the discussion (15+ people) with participants describing a wide variety of Carpentries activities happening around the country. While traditional two-day workshops are still very common, Carpentries lessons and approaches are being adapted for use in longer courses such as the CSIRO Data School as well as shorter offerings from not-for-profits (e.g. Intersect) and university departments (e.g. Research Platform Services) that provide training for researchers on a regular basis. Carpentries workshops are also being incorporated into Research Bazaar events around Australia, which are multi-day on-campus festivals promoting digital literacy.

The Carpentries Australia: Community Discussion

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Back in February 2013, Greg Wilson (co-founder of Software Carpentry) flew out to Sydney and Melbourne to run the first ever Software Carpentry “bootcamps” outside of Europe and North America. Those of us involved in those initial workshops could not have anticipated just how quickly things would grow. Fast forward six years and here’s how far we’ve come in Australia:

150+ workshops
3,750+ learners
130+ qualified instructors
7 member institutions

Past Software Carpentry workshops in Australia

Data Carpentry for Atmosphere and Ocean Scientists

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Back in late 2012, I was a couple of years into my first job out of college. My undergraduate studies had left me somewhat underprepared for the coding associated with analyzing climate model data for a national science organization, so I was searching online for assistance with Python programming. I stumbled upon the website of an organization called Software Carpentry, which at the time was a relatively small group of volunteers running two-day scientific computing “bootcamps” for researchers. I reached out to ask if they’d be interested in running a workshop alongside the 2013 Annual Conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS), and to my surprise Greg Wilson - the co-founder of the organization - flew out to Australia to teach at our event in Melbourne and another in Sydney (the first ever bootcamps outside of North America and Europe). I trained up as an instructor soon after, and from 2014-2017 I hosted Software Carpentry workshops alongside the AMOS conference, as well as other ad hoc workshops in various meteorology and oceanography departments.

Climate Science and the Command Line

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Climate science has a pretty high profile these days, particularly in my personal area of research, which involves quantifying the role humans have played in climate change (otherwise known as “climate attribution”). Behind the glamorous media coverage and international meetings, however, research in this field centers around the most unglamorous tool of all: the command line. From data management and workflow coordination to remotely accessing supercomputing facilities and backing up code, the command line is the most critical part of my toolbox. Let me explain…

Introducing the Research Bazaar

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the lessons Software Carpentry has learned over the years is that there's no substitute for a face-to-face learning experience. The unscripted interactions that occur between instructors, helpers and participants at our workshops are as important, if not more important, than the formal teaching syllabus itself. Of course, we aren't the only educator in the digital research space to which this lesson applies. The social aspect of in-person learning experiences is equally important to the various organisations, eResearch departments and libraries around the world tasked with "up-skilling" the next generation of digital researchers.

Inserting Software Carpentry Graduates into Coding Communities

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the issues I'd like to see Software Carpentry tackle is what happens to learners after they've attended a workshop.

Software Carpentry Set to Explode in Australia and New Zealand

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Given the global success of Software Carpentry (10,000 learners and counting), it's easy to forget that the first two-day workshops were held only three short years ago. Excited by the potential of the project in those early days, Josh Madin (Macquarie University) and myself (University of Melbourne) pooled our funds and got Greg Wilson out to Australia to run the first ever workshops outside of Europe and North America. Since those initial Sydney and Melbourne workshops in February 2013, an additional 15 have been held around Australia and New Zealand and there are a dozen or so active local instructors.

2015 Election: Damien Irving

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Damien Irving has withdrawn from the election in order to focus on completing his thesis. We're grateful for his work on the interim Steering Committee, and wish him the best of luck with his PhD.

Why Institutional Partnerships Make So Much Sense

Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When I first got involved in Software Carpentry, I liked nothing more than to lament the fact that universities don't teach their undergraduates (or early post-graduates) fundamental programming skills. It was one of the main reasons I felt so compelled to help out. By running our two-day workshops, I felt that we were basically picking up the slack until such time that universities woke up to themselves and started teaching this stuff. At this point, I felt that (like many non-profit organisations striving to make the world a better place) Software Carpentry would have achieved its mission by essentially making itself redundant.

Fast forward a couple of years and I'm now part of a new University of Melbourne department tasked with the job of teaching programming fundamentals to post-graduates. To my surprise, I've found that in this progressive new world we actually need Software Carpentry more than ever. The interim board of the Software Carpentry Foundation is seeking to form partnerships with organisations like my own, so I thought this was an opportune time to share our experiences.

A Self-Recorded Workshop

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Among the many great lessons contained in Greg Wilson's recent post on building better teachers, perhaps one of the most important was that in order to improve our collective teaching standards, we really need to see each other in action:

The New MATLAB Teaching Materials

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When Software Carpentry started running bootcamps back in 2012, Python was used exclusively for the programming lessons. While these lessons were as language agnostic as possible (i.e. the materials focused on transferrable programming concepts as opposed to specifics of the Python language), people soon expressed an interest in running bootcamps using other languages. R very quickly established itself as a regular alternative to Python, but it wasn't until early 2014 that the first ever Matlab bootcamp was held (see here and here for blog posts about the event; the official event page is here).

Software Carpentry: the University Course

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I recently submitted my final assignment for the Specialist Certificate in Teaching for Graduate Researchers. For this final task, we were asked to design a curriculum document for a university subject that we would like to see taught in the future. The first thing that came to mind was Software Carpentry, so here's my take on what a bootcamp would look like, if it were to become an actual university course.

What to Say at a Bootcamp, After It's All Said and Done

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm going to be teaching my first ever bootcamp in the coming days. My biggest fear (and there are many!) is that the participants will walk out of the room on the final afternoon and go straight back to their old habits, never taking the time to incorporate what they've learned into their daily workflow. In an attempt to avoid this eventuality, I've planned a rousing concluding address to explain why the content taught at a Software Carpentry bootcamp is so important. It goes something like this...