On this week’s podcast, Greg Wilson tells the story of a university course he created, and has taught for many years, called Software Carpentry. I have known Greg for a long time. We are kindred spirits in several ways. Most notably, we like to mine veins of knowledge, experience, and technique that some practitioners take for granted, but that many others haven’t yet discovered — or don’t yet use as well as they could.
I, for example, wonder why we don’t teach everyone basic principles of structured information, namespace design, and syndication. Greg, similarly, wonders why student programmers — and student scientists whose careers increasingly depend on computational methods — are not taught basic principles of version control, debugging, and refactoring. And why we don’t read great software in the same way we read great literature or study landmark scientific experiments. And why the controlled reproducibility of commercial software development isn’t typical of computational science.
If you care about these issues, there are two ways you can help. First, take a look at the reboot of the Software Carpentry course that Greg’s experience has led him to propose. Second, help him find the funding to keep doing this work.
Having graduated in 2006 in computer science program at Lehigh… I can 100% agree with rethinking how computer science is taught. We did no version control and used software programs 15 years old. Very glad to see Greg talking on this.
Jon,
As always – great talk. You have the best guests.
Scott Hanselman’s latest podcast on a book for Beginner programming touches on some of the same topics (programming as part of the curriculum, etc) as this talk.
http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=212
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