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Hello, and welcome to Software Carpentry. |
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Our goal is to make scientists and engineers more productive by teaching them fundamental computational skills. |
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I’m the project lead. |
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I’m a programmer by training. |
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But I’ve also been an author, a university professor, an entrepreneur a couple of times… |
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…and of course, I’m a proud Canadian. |
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Let’s start with a few facts. In 2008, almost 2000 scientists responded to an online survey that we organized. |
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We asked them, “How do you use computers?” |
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And, “How did you learn what you know?” |
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They told us that on average they spend about 40% of their time building or using software. (Remember, this is all scientists, not specifically computational scientists.) |
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53% told us that this number is going up. |
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And an astonishing 96% told us that they are mostly self-taught. |
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We weren’t able to get any data on how productive or effective they are… |
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…but the evidence we do have suggests that everything seems to take longer and hurt more than it should. |
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Which is hardly surprising: |
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While there are many courses out there on parallel programming, cloud computing, and what-not… |
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…there are very few on the prerequisite skills needed to build, maintain, share, and use software efficiently. |
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This is sort of like having universities, but not having high schools to prepare people for them. |
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Software Carpentry is the solution. |
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It is an intensive training course that gives scientists and engineers those fundamental skills. |
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We have shown, over and over, that 25 hours of lectures (about the same as a regular one-term course)… |
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…plus 150 to 200 hours of lab work… |
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…can have a dramatic impact on productivity. |
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We can typically save people 20% of their time—that’s a day a week… |
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…and it’s not unusual for students to report a tenfold savings. |
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As you can see, it’s not your usual computational science course. |
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Our course is 100% open. |
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The lectures are covered by the Creative Commons Attribution license… |
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…and the examples by the MIT Open Source license. |
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This means that anyone who wants to use the material can do so free of charge. |
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So if it’s free, how was it created? The answer is that Software Carpentry’s development has been funded for over 13 years by people like you: people who need this kind of training. |
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As with most open source projects, if everyone puts in a little, everyone gets out a lot. |
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We do charge for traditional on-site delivery, customization, and tech support, but you don’t have to pay for any of this to use the material that’s already there. |
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In the last year alone, we’ve been funded by all of these universities, companies, research labs, and computing centers. Thanks to them, we’re helping thousands of people get more done with less pain—over 140,000, if you believe the stats from our web site. |
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So here’s what we’re doing now to improve the course. We’re taking the Version 3 lecture notes, which were static HTML pages, and turning them into video lectures and worked examples. |
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We’re offering over-the-web support via Skype and desktop sharing to early adopters… |
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…and building an online community so that we can scale up to reach more people in more disciplines. |
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How can you help? The best way is to give us feedback as new material is posted. Is it what you need? Is it the right pace? What have we missed or gotten wrong? |
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You can also tell us which of the topics currently slated for addition you’d like us to tackle first. |
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And of course, we’re always looking for more sponsorship: our current funding runs to April 2011, and we’d like to be able to carry on after that. |
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If you’d like more information, or would like to help us out, please send me email, or have a look at our web site. Thank you for your time. |