July 27 & 28, 2017
McMaster University, Hamilton Hall room 104
Instructors: Ben Bolker, Jake Cowper Szamosi
Helpers: Laura Rossi, Shahrokh Shekarriz
Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including the Unix shell, version control, data management in R, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.
For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Best Practices for Scientific Computing".
Who: The course is aimed at graduate students, post-docs, staff, and PIs who want to improve their informatics skills. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
Where:
McMaster University, Hamilton Hall room 104.
Get directions with
OpenStreetMap
or
Google Maps.
Campus map available
here.
Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below). They are also required to read and abide by Software Carpentry's Code of Conduct.
We expect all participants to come with needed software installed. If you have trouble, or would like help with, installing any of the software, please attend our software installation party, July 25 at 4 p.m. in LSB 216.
Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organisers have checked that:
Materials will be provided in advance of the workshop; please notify the organizers in advance if you need large-print handouts.
Contact: Please email Jake at szamosjc@mcmaster.ca for more information.
Enrollment in this workshop must be done in advance and costs $20. You can sign up on Eventbrite. We encourage PIs to cover the cost of the workshop for their trainees out of grants wherever possible. If payment by credit card/p-card is not possible, please email us to arrange to pay with a grant number.
Surveys
Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.
| 09:00 | Automating tasks with the Unix shell (Jake): data file |
| 10:30 | Coffee |
| 10:45 | More automating tasks with the Unix shell (Ben) |
| 12:00 | Lunch break |
| 13:00 | Programming with R (Jake): intro, data structures part 1: data file |
| 14:30 | Coffee |
| 14:45 | More Programming with R (Ben): exploring data frames, subsetting data frames: Script |
| 16:00 | Wrap-up |
| 09:00 | Version control with Git (Jake) |
| 10:30 | Coffee |
| 10:45 | More version control with Git (Ben) |
| 12:00 | Lunch break |
| 13:00 | Back to Programming with R (Jake): control flow, functions explained |
| 14:30 | Coffee |
| 14:45 | End with Programming with R (Ben) data manipulation with dplyr, writing good software |
| 16:00 | Wrap-up |
clone, pull, push, ...add, commit, ...status, diff, ...To participate in a Software Carpentry workshop, you will need access to the software described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.
We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.
Bash is a commonly-used shell that gives you the power to do simple tasks more quickly.
cmd and press [Enter])setx HOME "%USERPROFILE%"
SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.exit then pressing [Enter]This will provide you with both Git and Bash in the Git Bash program.
The default shell in all versions of Mac OS X is Bash, so no
need to install anything. You access Bash from the Terminal
(found in
/Applications/Utilities).
See the Git installation video tutorial
for an example on how to open the Terminal.
You may want to keep
Terminal in your dock for this workshop.
The default shell is usually Bash, but if your
machine is set up differently you can run it by opening a
terminal and typing bash. There is no need to
install anything.
Git is a version control system that lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com. You will need a supported web browser (current versions of Chrome, Firefox or Safari, or Internet Explorer version 9 or above).
You will need an account at github.com for parts of the Git lesson. Basic GitHub accounts are free. We encourage you to create a GitHub account if you don't have one already. Please consider what personal information you'd like to reveal. For example, you may want to review these instructions for keeping your email address private provided at GitHub.
Git should be installed on your computer as part of your Bash install (described above).
For OS X 10.9 and higher, install Git for Mac
by downloading and running the most recent "mavericks" installer from
this list.
After installing Git, there will not be anything in your /Applications folder,
as Git is a command line program.
For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.8) use the
most recent available installer labelled "snow-leopard"
available here.
If Git is not already available on your machine you can try to
install it via your distro's package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu run
sudo apt-get install git and for Fedora run
sudo yum install git.
For the purposes of this workshop, we'll be using the lightweight nano text editor wherever possible. If you use Windows and can't instal nano, please use Notepad++.
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. To install it, try downloading the Software Carpentry Windows installer and double click on the file to run it. This installer requires an active internet connection and may not work on all versions of Windows.
Notepad++ or Sublime Text are reasonable options for Windows users who cannot install nano.
nano (which should be pre-installed with your Git installation; type nano in the shell),
Text Wrangler or
Sublime Text.
nano (which should be pre-installed),
Gedit,
Kate or
Sublime Text.
Vim alert: When you're writing code, it's nice to have a text editor that is
optimized for writing code, with features like automatic
color-coding of key words. The default text editor on Mac OS X and
Linux is usually set to Vim, which is not famous for being
intuitive. if you accidentally find yourself stuck in it ("beep mode"),
try typing the escape key, followed by :q! (colon, lower-case 'q',
exclamation mark), then hitting Return to return to the shell.
R is a programming language that is especially powerful for data exploration, visualization, and statistical analysis. To interact with R, we use RStudio.
If you have previously installed R and/or RStudio, please make sure if at all possible that you have the most up-to-date versions. If your current R version is 3.2.5 or older, you will need to re-install packages and will get the latest versions of all packages by default; please be careful if you depend on a particular release of a package. Feel free to contact the organizers if you have any concerns.
Install R by downloading and running this .exe file from CRAN. Also, please install the RStudio IDE. Note that if you have separate user and admin accounts, you should run the installers as administrator (right-click on .exe file and select "Run as administrator" instead of double-clicking). Otherwise problems may occur later, for example when installing R packages.
Install R by downloading and running this .pkg file from CRAN. Also, please install the RStudio IDE.
You can download the binary files for your distribution
from CRAN. Or
you can use your package manager (e.g. for Debian/Ubuntu
run sudo apt-get install r-base and for Fedora run
sudo yum install R). Also, please install the
RStudio IDE.
Once you've installed R and RStudio, launch RStudio, go
to the console and
install the dplyr and tidyr
packages by typing
install.packages("dplyr")
install.packages("tidyr")
install.packages("ggplot2")
(while you are connected to the Internet). If this is giving you prolems on
Windows, try restarting R by right clicking and choosing "run R as
administrator."