Software Carpentry - Helping scientists make better software/programming

http://software-carpentry.org/

Version 4

We are currently updating the content and format so that students can work through the material they need, when they need it. The lectures we have completed so far cover:

• Version Control – Learn how to collaborate with other people and automatically create a record of previous work using a version control system.
• The Shell – Much of scientific computing involves the Unix operating system.  Effectively using the shell is one of the first steps to efficient Unix programming.
• Python – A versatile open source language that is increasingly popular among scientific programmers.
• Testing – The basics of software testing, including exception handling and unit testing.
• Sets and Dictionaries – Using associative data structures to better represent data that isn’t a list or vector.
• Regular Expressions – Manipulate text quickly with this powerful set of pattern matching tools.
• Databases – An introduction to SQL, the most popular database query language.
• Classes and Objects – The basics of object-oriented programming.
• Program Design – An example driven introduction to effective program design.
• Systems Programming – How to manipulate files and directories from a program.
• Make – This tool will help automate everything from large software builds to batch processes.
• Matrix Programming – Use array libraries to make numerical programs smaller and faster.
• MATLAB – The world’s most popular numerical programming language.
• Multimedia Programming – Work with images, sound, and other media.
• Spreadsheets – Learn to use spreadsheets for data organization, analysis, and visualization.
• Essays – Longer (non-video) discussion of some important ideas in scientific programming.
• Recommended Reading – An annotated bibliography.
• Glossary – Key terms.

Version 3

The lecture notes from Version 3 of this course (2004-2009) are available at http://software-carpentry.org/3_0/.