Research Tools on The Carpentries

My Favorite Tool - Docker

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

What kind of tool is it?

Docker is a virtualization tool.

Why I like it

I use Docker every day - it’s the one piece of software that has changed the way I work in recent years. There are many other approaches to virtualisation but its versatility and ubiquity is compelling. I use it for many purposes - for rapidly obtaining and executing other open source software, for providing a predictable environment in which to test code that I’ve written, and for building and deploying my own and third-party applications. We use it in the RSE team at Imperial College to ensure that others can rapidly install and evaluate our work.

My Favorite Tool - Midnight Commander

Sun, 14 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

What kind of tool is it?

A text editor and file manager.

Why I like it

My favourite tool is Midnight Commander and its text editor (which also works as a standalone tool) Mcedit. These two utilities are powerful yet easy to use. They both run on the command line in Unix operating systems, but instead of typing commands, they work mostly by using menus and selecting things with arrow keys or a mouse. This makes them a kind of halfway house between a traditional command line and a GUI utility and in my opinion they bring together the best of both worlds.

My Favorite Tool - Twitter

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Why do I like Twitter?

At the risk of sounding like a shallow person with a short attention span, Twitter really is a favourite of mine. I tweet as cloudaus.

It’s not really Twitter’s fault that people use it for shameless self-promotion, for marketing, or for fighting culture wars. That side of it has probably turned many people off, which is a shame because Twitter has so many practical uses.

My Favorite Tool - QGIS

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

QGIS (formerly Quantum GIS) is an open source Geographic Information System.

QGIS is capable of advanced analysis and cartography, but I don’t use it for that.

In my research in hydrodynamic modelling, I deal with a lot of spatial data - coastlines, bathymetry, and the like - and this will eventually be processed and plotted using R, MATLAB or Python.

But if I’ve received a file and simply want to take a quick look at it, or if I want to quickly compare two files that use different coordinate systems and see if things line up, most of the time I can throw the file at QGIS and it will show it to me with a few clicks. This approach lacks the reproducibility of a coded solution, but it’s an awful lot quicker for a throwaway visualisation.

My Favorite tool - A Coding Sandbox

Thu, 21 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is repl.it, a ‘sandbox’ tool to help me test and refine Python code.

Why do I like it?

It is an online tool for testing/running code. It allows you to write and run code in a number of different languages, and see the results. No R support I’m afraid, but it does have Python (2 and 3), Ruby, Haskell, Go, JavaScript and many more.

My Favorite Tool - Todoist

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is Todoist, a task manager.

Why do I like it?

Todoist is a cross-platform ’to-do’ tool. I went through many different ones before settling on Todoist a few years ago and I now use it to organize everything from my household chores, grocery shopping and gift ideas for family members to my many work projects and non-work projects (things I do that are work-related but not apart of my actual job).