Code for Thought

How can you transition from photo-type or exploratory research software to production code? Can you? I've been discussing this with my guest Duncan McGregor. In the first part of our discussion we touch on how you can effectively analyse large data sets that are distributed over different locations with tools like Dask.  Links: https://www.youtube.com/@PairingWithDuncan Duncan's YouTube...

English Edition:  In this last episode for the ByteSized RSE "miniseries" we talk about AI assisted coding - and the (long) history how engineers tried to come up with assisting tools to make our code better and more robust. My guest is Liam Gao from Imperial College, London, UK.  Links: https://github.com/features/copilot  GitHub Co-Pilot https://huggingface.co HuggingFace another AI to...

Deutsche Ausgabe:  Das Hermes Projekt versucht das Publizieren von Software zu vereinfachen und auch zu automatisieren. Stephan Druskat und Michael Meinel, beide vom DLR   und dem deRSE e. V. erklären uns was es damit auf sich hat. Links: https://hermes.software-metadata.pub/en/latest/ Hermes homepage https://docs.software-metadata.pub/en/latest/ Hermes workflow https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.09015 da...

English Edition: This episode is all about 'green computing' and how we can check the impact of our computing efforts. Helping me with that are Kirsty Pringle ( SSI ), Loic Lannelongue (University of Cambridge, UK) and Andy Turner from the EPCC in Edinburgh (UK). Tools discussed in this episode: https://www.green-algorithms.org Green Algorithms home page with the online calculator https:...

Edition française:  le projet RésIn - réseau d'ingénieurs RésIn est une collaboration  entre Science Po et l'Université Paris Cité pour valoriser le travail des ingénieurs pluridisciplinaires. Audrey Banyex et Diégo Antolinos-Basso (maintenant à l'Université de Neuchâtel, Suisse) nous expliquent pourquoi créer ce réseau et à quoi il sert. Liens: https://medialab.sciencespo.fr/activi...

English Edition: How can repository services like GitHub or GitLab help you manage your project. Listen to my conversation with three guests, Gemma Turon (Ersilia), Ben Clifford (Parsl) and Mike Simpson (Uni Newcastle) how they use GitHub PM tools effectively in their work. Links: https://ersilia.io Ersilia project - Gemma Turon https://github.com/ersilia-os GitHub pages for Ersilia https://parsl-...

Deutsche Ausgabe:  Ende November 2024 fand in Berlin ein Austausch von Ausbildern und Tutoren bei Helmholtz statt - unter dem Namen TEACH. Wie kann man dem wachsenden Bedarf and Weiterbildung gerecht werden und welche Mittel und Tools helfen dabei. In diesem kleinen Rückblick spreche ich mit den OrganisatorInnen und Sprechern der Veranstaltung: Prof Silke Schworm, Jolanta Zjuba, Fredo Erxleben und...

English Edition: together with Meag Doherty and Zihao Lu I want to shine a light on UX/UI design in research and put the capital "D" back into it. The way we design our software and research projects shapes the way not only the way they are being used, but also how successful they will be.  Links: https://www.figma.com/ Figma tool for wireframing https://balsamiq.com Balsamiq wireframe h...

Edition française: Nous sommes ravi d'accueillir Florian Angeletti d'INRIA, qui est très connu pour son travail sur OCamL (anciennement Objective CamL), le langage multi-paradigme. OCamL est Open Source et très utilisé dans le métier de la recherche. Mais aussi dans certains secteurs industriels.  https://ocaml.org https://dev.realworldocaml.org https://perso.quaesituri.org/florian.angel...

I met Deborah at the Research Software Engineering 2024 conference in Newcastle, UK, where she gave an impassioned speech about her drive to carve out a new career and new opportunities in STEM. Here she talks about how she got here and the obstacles she faces.  My apologies, I initially uploaded the raw version of the interview. This should now be corrected https://we-are-ols.org Open Life Scienc...

Deutsche Ausgabe: Vom 2.-4. Dezember 2024 fand in Hannover die Tagung zum Thema Digitale Kompetenzen in der Wissenschaft statt. Mit von der Partie waren ca 35 TeilnehmerInnen aus der Landschaft der Forschungssoftware EntwicklerInnen. Bei den Arbeitskreisen kamen dabei interessante und spannende Vorschläge heraus, wie Ihr hoffentlich in dieser Folge hören könnt. Links: https://www.volkswagenstiftun...

Happy New Year and Welcome to Season 9 of Code for Thought. The season opens with a ByteSized RSE session - the short online courses with companion episodes for all of you who do science and write code. ByteSized RSE is sponsored by the Universe HPC project.  Subject for this episode is data visualisation and how you could use the perception features of our brain (see Gestalt psychology) to tell a...

English Edition: In this last episode of 2024 I want to remember David Mills and his work on the Network Time Protocol (NTP). The tool that keeps our machines in sync. David Mills worked closely with Harlan Stenn from the Network Time Foundation on NTP and I was very fortunate to grab some of Harlan's time to talk to him about NTP and David Mills' contribution.  Some links (by far not an...

English Edition:   Arnaud Legrand, Christophe Pouzat and Konrad Hinsen, three French researchers, who went through the pain of making research data and software reproducible. Out of that pain grew a set of online courses. I met with them to discuss how they developed the courses, the steps they had to go through and what the courses cover.  https://www.fun-mooc.fr/en/courses/reproducible-research-...

Edition française:  GNU Guix est un gestionnaire de paquets pour GNU/Linux. Ghislain a rencontré Pierre-Antoine Bouttier, Ludovic Courtes et Simon Tournier de GUIX pour discuter de la façon dont GUIX peut aider à la reproductibilité.  https://guix.gnu.org/fr/ https://10years.guix.gnu.org/video/guix-as-a-tool-for-computational-science/ https://10years.guix.gnu.org/video/using-guix-for-scientific-re...

English edition [EN]: Niklaus Wirth is one of the computing pioneers and his work inspired many other technologies and a generation of engineers. In this episode I discuss one of his many contributions: the programming language Pascal. And we hear from 3 people who worked and learnt with Pascal in their career: Irving Reid, Todd Jacobs and Charles Forsythe. Links: https://computerhistory.org/profi...

English edition [EN]: We're kickstarting a round of new ByteSized RSE online classes and podcast episodes with an episode on containers. Focusing on Podman (used in the online class) and Docker. My guest for this episode is Simon Li from the Uni. Dundee.  Many thanks to Universe HPC for supporting this podcast.  Containers: https://docs.docker.com Docker https://www.docker.com/pricing/faq/ In...

Deutsche Version: In dieser letzten Folge vor Weihnachten treffe ich mich mit Priv. Doz. Dr Georg Hager vom Rechenzentrum der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Georg Hager gibt uns einen kleinen Überblick in die Entwicklung von HPC Rechnern, also Hochleistungsrechnern und wir sprechen über die Herausforderung bzgl. Software Entwicklung und wie man Personal and HPC Rechner heranführt. Links: https://h...

English Edition:  https://www.esciencecenter.nl  Home page of the eScience Center   https://www.esciencecenter.nl/calls-for-proposals/fellowship-open-call/ Fellowship programme at the eScience Center Get in touch Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören! Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt: Email mailto: peter@code4thought.org UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @co...

L'édition française:  On a beaucoup de promesse sur l'usage du calcul quantique. Ghislain Vaillant discute avec Sabine Mehr et Félix Givois de GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif) pour jeter un coup d'œil aux coulisses de cette technologie fascinante.  https://www.genci.fr/connaitre-genci/calcul-haute-performance-intelligence-artificielle-et-calcul-quantique https://...

English Edition [EN]:  In this episode I am looking at two different champion schemes: one at Imperial College London, focussing on research software and the other at Cambridge University for research data. My guests are Jeremy Cohen and Mike Bearpark from Imperial and Clair Castle, Sacha Jones and Lutfi Ben Othman from Cambridge University.  Imperial: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/computational-meth...

Deutsche Ausgabe: Diesmal geht es an die TU Braunschweig, von wo aus Jan Linxweiler uns über seine Arbeit am Suresoft Projekt erzählt - und uns erklärt warum es wichtig ist, nachhaltige Software für die Wissenschaft zu schreiben. Links https://suresoft.dev Die Homepage des Suresoft Projektes https://zenodo.org/communities/suresoft/ Suresoft on Zenodo  https://doi.org/10.24355/dbbs.084-202210121528...

English edition:  My guest this week is Kurt Lust from the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and part of the user support team of LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure). Acc to the website, LUMI is Europe's fastest supercomputer. Kurt tells us what it takes to run a machine like that and all the gotchas that he and his colleagues encounter. Links https://www.lumi-supercomputer.eu/about-lumi...

English Edition: Meet Kenneth Hoste and Alan O'Cais who will tell us about EESSI,The European Environment for Scientific Software Installation for high performance computing (HPC).  Links: https://www.eessi.io Home page of EESSI https://docs.easybuild.io EESSI docs https://github.com/boegel Kenneth's GitHub page https://cernvm.cern.ch our friend CERN VM/VMFS https://lmod.readthedocs.io/e...

L'édition française: Alice Brenon est une doctorande et chercheuse du CNRS en informatique linguistique au LIRIS (Laboratoire d'InfoRmatique en Image et Systèmes d'information) à Lyon. Alice décrit son engagement dans le projet GEODE (“Encyclopedic GEOgraphical DiscoursE: Writing about Geography in France from the Enlightenment to the Age of Wikipedia”). Dans ce cadre, elle a dévelo...