Newcastle University, Barbara Strang Teaching Centre
Tue 11 March 2025
09:00 - 17:00
Instructors:
Jannetta Steyn, Frances Turner
Helpers:
Carol Booth, John Schoneboom
General Information
The Carpentries project comprises the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and
Library Carpentry communities of Instructors, Trainers, Maintainers,
helpers, and supporters who share a mission to teach foundational computational and data science
skills to researchers.
Want to learn more and stay engaged with The Carpentries? Carpentries Clippings is The Carpentries' biweekly newsletter, where we share community news, community job postings, and more.
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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 program design, version control, data management,
and task automation.
Participants will be encouraged to help one another
and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.
Who:
The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers.
You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools
that will be presented at the workshop.
Requirements:
PCs and an online environment will be provided but participants are welcome to bring their own laptop with a
Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on.
In in order to continue working after the course, they should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).
Note for members of Newcastle University: Software should be installed from Software Center on Newcastle University managed Windows PCs and laptops. In case of difficulty please log a ticket to it.servicedesk@ncl.ac.uk and let us know at the contact details below if you still need help.
Accessibility:
We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. For workshops at a physical location, the workshop organizers have checked that:
The room is wheelchair / scooter accessible.
Accessible restrooms are available.
Materials will be provided in advance of the workshop and large-print handouts are available if needed by notifying the organizers in advance. If we can help making learning easier for you (e.g. sign-language interpreters, lactation facilities) please get in touch (using contact details below) and we will attempt to provide them.
Glosario is a multilingual glossary
for computing and data science terms. The glossary helps
learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it
in their native language. Translating data science terms also provides a teaching tool for Carpentries Instructors to reduce barriers
for their learners.
Roles:
To learn more about the roles at the workshop (who will be doing what),
refer to our Workshop FAQ.
Code of Conduct
Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.
Collaborative Notes
We will use this collaborative document for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.
Surveys
Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.
To participate in a
Software Carpentry
workshop,
you will need access to software as described below.
In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.
Click on "Next" four times (two times if you've previously
installed Git). You don't need to change anything
in the Information, location, components, and start menu screens.
From the dropdown menu, "Choosing the default editor used by Git", select "Use the Nano editor by default" (NOTE: you will need to scroll up to find it) and click on "Next".
On the page that says "Adjusting the name of the initial branch in new repositories", ensure that
"Let Git decide" is selected. This will ensure the highest level of compatibility for our lessons.
Ensure that "Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software" is selected and
click on "Next". (If you don't do this Git Bash will not work properly, requiring you to
remove the Git Bash installation, re-run the installer and to select the "Git from the
command line and also from 3rd-party software" option.)
Select "Use bundled OpenSSH".
Ensure that "Use the native Windows Secure Channel Library" is selected and click on "Next".
Ensure that "Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings" is selected and click on "Next".
Ensure that "Use Windows' default console window" is selected and click on "Next".
Ensure that "Default (fast-forward or merge) is selected and click "Next"
Ensure that "Git Credential Manager" is selected and click on "Next".
Ensure that "Enable file system caching" is selected and click on "Next".
Click on "Install".
Click on "Finish" or "Next".
If your "HOME" environment variable is not set (or you don't know what this is):
Open command prompt (Open Start Menu then type cmd and press Enter)
Type the following line into the command prompt window exactly as shown:
setx HOME "%USERPROFILE%"
Press Enter, you should see SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.
Quit command prompt by typing exit then pressing Enter
This will provide you with both Git and Bash in the Git Bash program.
Video Tutorial
The default shell in Mac OS X Ventura and newer versions is Zsh, but
Bash is available in all versions, 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.
To see if your default shell is Bash type echo $SHELL
in Terminal and press the Return key. If the message
printed does not end with '/bash' then your default is something
else, you can change your current shell to Bash by typing
bash and then pressing Return. To check
your current shell type echo $0 and press Return.
To change your default shell to Bash type chsh -s /bin/bash and
press the Return key, then reboot for the change to take effect. To
change your default back to Zsh, type chsh -s /bin/zsh, press the
Return key and reboot. To check available shells, type
cat /etc/shells.
Video Tutorial
The default shell is usually Bash and there is usually no need to
install anything.
To see if your default shell is Bash type echo $SHELL
in Terminal and press the Return key. If the message
printed does not end with '/bash' then your default is something
else, you can change your current shell to Bash by typing
bash and then pressing Return. To check
your current shell type echo $0 and press Return.
To change your default shell to Bash type chsh -s /bin/bash and
press the Return key, then reboot for the change to take effect. To
change your default back to Zsh, type chsh -s /bin/zsh, press the
Return key and reboot. To check available shells, type
cat /etc/shells.
Git
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.
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.
Please open the Terminal app, type git --version and press
Enter/Return. If it's not installed already,
follow the instructions to Install the "command line
developer tools". Do not click "Get Xcode", because that will
take too long and is not necessary for our Git lesson.
After installing these tools, there won't be anything in your /Applications
folder, as they and Git are command line programs.
For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.8) use the
most recent available installer labelled "snow-leopard"
available here.
(Note: this project is no longer maintained.)
Because this installer is not signed by the developer, you may have to
right click (control click) on the .pkg file, click Open, and click
Open in the pop-up dialog. You can watch
a video tutorial about this case.
Video Tutorial
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 dnf install git.
Text Editor
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 macOS and
Linux is usually set to Vim, which is not famous for being
intuitive. If you accidentally find yourself stuck in it, hit
the Esc key, followed by :+Q+!
(colon, lower-case 'q', exclamation mark), then hitting Return to
return to the shell.
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop.
It is installed along with Git.
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop.
See the Git installation video tutorial
for an example on how to open nano.
It should be pre-installed.
Video Tutorial
nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop.
It should be pre-installed.
Python
Python is a popular language for
research computing, and great for general-purpose programming as
well. Installing all of its research packages individually can be
a bit difficult, so we recommend
Anaconda,
an all-in-one installer.
Regardless of how you choose to install it,
please make sure you install Python version 3.x
(e.g., 3.6 is fine).
We will teach Python using the Jupyter Notebook,
a programming environment that runs in a web browser (Jupyter Notebook will be installed by Anaconda). For this to work you will need a reasonably
up-to-date browser. The current versions of the Chrome, Safari and
Firefox browsers are all
supported
(some older browsers, including Internet Explorer version 9
and below, are not).
Download the Anaconda for Windows installer with Python 3. (If you are not sure which version to choose, you probably want the 64-bit Graphical Installer Anaconda3-...-Windows-x86_64.exe)
Install Python 3 by running the Anaconda Installer, using all of the defaults for installation except make sure to check Add Anaconda to my PATH environment variable.
Download the Anaconda Installer with Python 3 for Linux.
(The installation requires using the shell. If you aren't
comfortable doing the installation yourself
stop here and request help at the workshop.)
Open a terminal window and navigate to the directory where
the executable is downloaded (e.g., `cd ~/Downloads`).
Type
bash Anaconda3-
and then press
Tab to autocomplete the full file name. The name of
file you just downloaded should appear.
Press Enter
(or Return depending on your keyboard).
You will follow the text-only prompts.
To move through the text, press Spacebar.
Type yes and press enter to approve the license.
Press Enter (or Return)
to approve the default location
for the files.
Type yes and press
Enter (or Return)
to prepend Anaconda to your PATH
(this makes the Anaconda distribution the default Python).