Waxing poetical in a Software Carpentry workshop

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hi everyone! I just finished running my first segment of a Software Carpentry workshop. I massively overprepared last evening and my notes for the first four lessons of unix shell are on google drive if anyone would care to reuse them.

In any case, one of my students (who had audited one of my other classes) made the following tweet: “Never heard anyone present fundamental computing concepts so poetically as @DenubisX @swcarpentry #MacquarieUni”

Macquarie Went Well

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week's bootcamp at Macquarie University went well: I fumbled the introduction to Python on Friday morning (which I haven't done in a long time), but with a bit of help from Eli Bressert and great crew of helpers, we got the afternoon back on track. Here's the usual good vs. bad feedback:

Good

Bad

Understanding the syntax of Python
The stories
The flow of material
Cygwin
Linking programming to thinking
Understanding size of manageable tasks
Version control
Sticky notes
Embedding provenance in files
Database concepts
Learning good work habits
Coding with loops
Free!
Let people make mistakes and then correcting
Interactive nature of the learning experience
I got to show my work to real human beings!

Installation
The stories
Python introduction (Greg screwed up)
Some programs don't work on some people's computers
Air conditioning
Struggling to switch between languages
Bit more practice with coding
Python in Cygwin sucks
"You should only work eight hours a day" — yeah, right
Not enough on databases
Couldn't see the screen
Discovering R isn't as good as I thought it was
Not having enough examples

Macquarie University on The Carpentries

Waxing poetical in a Software Carpentry workshop

Macquarie Went Well