I had to comment on this :) In a place I worked, scripting itself was considered a burden. Researchers run the analysis pipeline by copy-pasting in the terminal lines from a Word document that detailed the different steps. This Word document was once a shell script who got its ".sh" extension mutilated (you know, extensions are also a burden) and from then on was opened as plain text.
It worked well because these were small clinical studies were you get a subject every few months, so spending three hours "running a script by hand" (I coined this term) was reasonable. Metadata for the analysis, such as the parameters of the pipeline or versions of the software used: nah, we re-run (by hand) the whole study again if things looked shady. Using a scripting language for doing your plots when you can use Illustrator with two clicks sounds as crazy as using a scripting language to calculate the average of a few numbers when you can do it in Excel with two clicks. So, my answer to this whole thing is it depends. Using Git to version control some short scripts that you probably would use once is an overkill. Using Latex to write a paper with no substantial math on it is an overkill. In some fields or at some point, though, you may need to use these more complicated tools. Lessons like Software Carpentry's are meant to ease the path toward these tools and to make people aware of their existence (the tool's existence, lessons are illuminating but not that much). So, sure, go ahead and use Dropbox, Google Docs, and other tools that make your research more productive. Be sure also to be aware of the pitfalls of these tools, so when your very productive research got you to a chair as a big professor in a big school, you don't forget to mark all the cells in that damn Excel column when you calculate its average [1,2]. Best, Ivan [1] http://rooseveltinstitute.org/researchers-finally-replicated-reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 3:03 PM, Maxime Boissonneault < [email protected]> wrote: > My experience is that in a workshop, people become actually interested in > git when they pair up and start collaborating and working on the same > project *at the same time*. > > I would say that this is the biggest strenght of Git versus SVN. > SVN is just fine if you are working alone, or if you are not working at > the same time as others in your group. But once you start getting > conflicts, this is where Git starts shinning. > > A good approach might be to start with the Github web UI rather than with > git commands, and then go down to the commands. The question is, is it > possible to teach the concepts of push/pull/merge before the concepts of > add/commit ? > > I'm not sure it is. > > Maxime > > > > Le 2016-03-01 08:23, Greg Wilson a écrit : > >> Re-reading Arjun Raj's post ( >> http://rajlaboratory.blogspot.ca/2016/02/from-reproducibility-to-over.html), >> I've got a couple of thoughts. First, I think some of the disparaging >> comments on Twitter and elsewhere were unhelpful: they're unlikely to get >> the author to change his mind, and it discourages other people from talking >> about what they do. >> >> Second, we all make the same decision he does most of the time. For >> example, people tell me I'd be more productive if I used Haskell instead of >> Python, or the Atom editor, or Slack, or blah blah blah. In almost every >> case, I compare the time I have to make the change, the time it'll take for >> the change to pay off, and the likelihood of the technology's fans being >> right about the benefits, and decide "nope" - and I'm willing to bet you do >> too. I'm probably wrong in some cases, but with so many new things flying >> around, I can't be certain which ones, and hey, deadlines... >> >> So here are my questions: >> >> 1. What's LD50 [1] for version control, i.e., how long would people have >> to use it (or watch someone else use) for half of them to be convinced it's >> worth adopting? I think LD50 for the Unix shell is less than an hour, >> because that's how long it takes us to introduce pipes and loops, which >> most workshop participants find compelling. At what point do at least half >> of workshop participants find Git compelling enough to actually adopt it? >> >> 2. What should we say to someone like Arjun? It's clear from his post >> that he knows the arguments in favor of version control, and has actually >> tried it. It's also clear that he cares about doing things well - what can >> we do to convince someone like that? >> >> Thanks, >> Greg >> >> [1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/LD50 >> >> > > -- > --------------------------------- > Maxime Boissonneault > Analyste de calcul - Calcul Québec, Université Laval > Président - Comité de coordination du soutien à la recherche de Calcul > Québec > Team lead - Research Support National Team, Compute Canada > Instructeur Software Carpentry > Ph. D. en physique > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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
