Dear all, If you're interested in teaching Python, and/or interested in science, do read on...!
========== Summary / TL;DR ========== For the first time, Software Carpentry is coming to the Netherlands. Supported by the Mozilla Foundation, they teach scientists to write better code, which is very much needed... On May 2-3, SC are teaching a Python-based workshop in Amsterdam, for 40 young scientists. If you're interested in helping out, either during this particular workshop, or in general, we'd love to hear from you! ========== Scientists & Spaghetti Code ========== Scientists are becoming more and more dependent on custom-written software for collecting and analyzing their data. How else are you going to control the sheer complexity of a particle accelerator, DNA sequencer or Hubble Space Telescope? However, many researchers are entirely self-tought, which leads to a lot of problems and spaghetti code. See [1] for some interesting background stories... An important part of the solution consists of teaching young scientists core skills such as program construction, version control, testing, command-line scripting and data management — something that's not properly taught yet at universities. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/467775a.html ========== About the Software Carpentry Workshop ========== Software Carpentry helps researchers be more productive by teaching them basic computing skills. They run Python-based boot camps at dozens of sites around the world, and also provide open access material online for self-paced instruction. The benefits are more reliable results and higher productivity: a day a week is common, and a ten-fold improvement isn't rare. SC is a volunteer organization, supported by the Sloan Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation. On Thu-Fri May 2-3, SC are giving their first workshop in Holland, at VU University Amsterdam. If you're interested in Python education for scientists, and helping us out, we'd love to hear from you! Ways you could get involved are: - Join the workshop, and help participants by walking around and answering questions. If you have experience with UNIX, the shell and Python: we could use a few more people... (Joining for just a single day is possible). - There will be informal drinks on Friday 3rd (tentative), on the VU campus. This'd be a great opportunity to meet up, and talk to the people from Software Carpentry about ways to contribute to the project. Please feel free to contact me (onnodb [AT] g/mail.com) with any questions you might have, or for more information. For more general information, please see: http://www.software-carpentry.org http://www.data2semantics.org/bootcamp Thanks for your time! Onno Broekmans (PhD student in biophysics, VU University Amsterdam) _______________________________________________ Python-nl mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-nl
