Thanks for including me in this discussion! I appreciate the willingness to engage. I’m in the midst of writing up a blog post to hopefully provide some insight (if not answers) to the question Greg posed, "So let me turn this around and ask Arjun: what would it take to convince you that it *was* worth using version control and makefiles and the like to manage your work? What would you, as a scientist, accept as compelling?”
More soon, Arjun > On Mar 3, 2016, at 9:47 AM, Robert M. Flight <[email protected]> wrote: > > I will probably write this up in a better blog post, but in the meantime I > can provide my own experience. > > I submitted a paper describing my own software that had been available for > over a year (categoryCompare, package: > http://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/categoryCompare.html, > paper > http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fgene.2014.00098/abstract). To > address the reviewers concerns, I created a branch of the git repo specific > to the paper, https://github.com/rmflight/categoryCompare/tree/paper, and > made a git repo just for that analysis (https://github.com/rmflight/ccPaper). > The analysis was fairly involved, and required writing over 500 lines of new > code, over 2 branches. Over the 2-3 months I revamped that paper and the > results, there were at least 2 times that I would have been completely lost > without version control, and the ability to keep track of changes and reset > to a working state, or branch from it. > > It has taken me a while to learn and become good at it (6+ years, and I still > don't commit like I think I should), but I can't imagine not having it now. > Has it been painful? Yes! Has it been worth it? Definitely. > > -Robert > > Robert M Flight, PhD > Bioinformatics Research Associate > Resource Center for Stable Isotope Resolved Metabolomics > Manager, Systems Biology and Omics Integration Journal Club > Markey Cancer Center > CC434 Roach Building > University of Kentucky > Lexington, KY > > Twitter: @rmflight > Web: rmflight.github.io > ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8141-7788 > EM [email protected] > PH 502-509-1827 > > To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than > asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what > the experiment died of. - Ronald Fisher > > On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 4:11 AM David Martin (Staff) > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > We need to do better at emphasizing that these are skills that need to be > > developed early and often, and not when you're in the middle of trying to > > complete a project. > > The "Why do I need to learn to swim? I'll wait till I am actually drowning > otherwise it is a waste of time" approach. > > ..d > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > > The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096 > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
