This week I was extremely lucky to experience a workshop put on by software carpentry (http://software-carpentry.org/). It was an intense two day workshop that exposes you to “useful” computing.

Back in January or February I was wandering around on the internet looking for information on bash and stumbled across their website which is a goldmine for information on how to use the unix shell, python basics and pretty much every fundamental topic in programming. After watching a couple of videos I saw that they were offering a free bootcamp at UBC and immediately signed up.

When I walked into Hugh Dempster two days ago I was surprised. I thought that the bootcamp was going to be in one of the large lecture halls, but it was in a classroom! Not only that, but it was a classroom full of graduate students and faculty members, not a single undergraduate in sight! Feeling slightly awkward I sat down in the back of the room and attended one of the coolest workshops I have ever been to in my life!

The workshop was very interactive with everyone typing away at their computers, trying things out. It went by at a really fast pace which was nice because it kept things interesting.  Greg Wilson was an awesome instructor. I thought he was pretty hilarious and he had so many cool things to talk about!  I was looking his bio up on the internet after the first day and found out that I have actually read one of the books that he edited, crazy!

We started off with learning about the shell, then did a little bit of python which I was familiar with, second day we learnt about databases e.t.c. but I missed most of it because I had a math midterm =P, then we went on to sort of higher level concepts like abstraction, testing and debugging. It does not sound like all that much, but you get blown away by the sheer amount of new commands, processes, and ideas that you are learning!

Anyways, it was an awesome workshop! I encourage you to check out their website or go to one of their workshops! I was really lucky in that I signed up right when the registration opened, apparently it was full within two days! It was only advertised to departments, but I just happened to stumble upon it at exactly the right time. Now I have some tools that are handy and ideas that I will carry with me into the future … it was a really inspiring two days! In addition to all the “free knowledge” that I was receiving, I got to meet people who are doing research in all sorts of different fields and hear about the technologies they use and the things they do. =)

So, if you are interested in learning useful information that can help you with your research or studies check out their lectures section: http://software-carpentry.org/