Dealing with git is a huge pain.  When I screw something up in git, I have
to take a deep breath, look things up on StackOverflow, and double check
all my commands, so that I don't break something.  The only reason I
learned it was because I had to learn it to contribute to open source
projects.  And when I try to help newbies make their first open source
contribution, the biggest roadblock is always git.  When I used version
control for my solo research project, I used mercurial.  Mercurial is not
just for small projects.  Python uses mercurial for their open source
project.  Facebook recently started using Mercurial instead of Git [1].

Terri

[1]
https://code.facebook.com/posts/218678814984400/scaling-mercurial-at-facebook/

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 3:51 PM, David Martin (Staff) <
[email protected]> wrote:

> We spend about 50 contact hours teaching our undergraduates the basics of
> R. Even that is not enough. It has been said that you need 100 hours to
> reach competency, and 1000 hours to master a subject. And the next stage is
> 10,000 hours to be an expert..
>
> How much time has he invested in actually learning those skills? I was
> totting up the time we spend teaching X versus the amount of complaints we
> get that the students don't know X. There is a strong inverse correlation.
> Folk want a cheap easy fix and have been promised that with computers. It
> does exist but it has to be earned. You don't get cheap and easy for free.
>
> Dr David Martin
> Lecturer in Bioinformatics
> College of Life Sciences
> University of Dundee
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Discuss <[email protected]> on behalf of
> Lex Nederbragt <[email protected]>
> Sent: 29 February 2016 20:43
> To: Software Carpentry Discussion
> Subject: Re: [Discuss] RajLab: From reproducibility to over-reproducibility
>
> Hi all and thanks for the many responses.
>
> My feeling reading this post was about tools (partly echoing Greg): 'we'
> know 'all of us' should use the appropriate tool, e.g. version control (is
> that what you call the moral high-ground?). But for the novice, these
> tools/methods have steep learning curves, thus high upfront time
> investment, and no immediate benefit (!!!). There is a burden on 'us' to
> convince 'others' of the need to invest time to adopt these tools.
>
> I am not sure whether more convincing (how? Research-based evidence?) or
> training is the answer, versus much easier to learn and use tools.
>
>    Lex
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> The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096
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