Code for Thought

Finally! After a failed attempt in 2022, I managed to visit Simon Pinches and Olivier Hoenen at ITER this time. ITER is the international thermonuclear energy reactor - and its aim is to build a nuclear fusion reactor that produces a surplus of energy in a sustainable manner. And can be used as a blueprint for future power stations. Simon and Olivier gave me the grand tour before we sat down and d...

Welcome back to Season 2 of ByteSized RSE, a program supported by Universe-HPC http://www.universe-hpc.ac.uk . The subject for this session is: Software Estimation and some ideas on how to approach it.  Things mentioned in this episode: The Mythical Man Month, Frederick Brooks, 1975,  Software Estimation, Steve McConnell, https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Software_Estimation/U5VCAwAAQBAJ?hl=e...

This episode takes us to Chicago, the host for the first ever conference of Research Software Engineering (RSE) in the US https://us-rse.org/usrse23/   . The conference was organised by the US RSE association https://us-rse.org   and was sold out. In this report I'll talk to a number of participants, presenters and organisers.  In order of appearance: Mary Anne Leung  Founder and President of...

Die Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur - NFDI - hat die grosse Aufgabe Forschungsprojekte, deren Daten und Anwendungen miteinander zu vernetzen. Der Verein wird geleitet von Prof. Dr. York Sure-Vetter, mit dem ich über die Aufgaben und Herausforderungen des NFDI spreche. Links https://www.nfdi.de/ Das Hauptportal des NFDI https://www.nfdi.de/cordi-2023 Die erste Konferenz - CoRDI 2023 - ausget...

My guests for this episode are Marie Piraud and Peter Steinbach from the Helmholtz Association in Germany. Helmholtz is the largest research association in Germany and has created a unit around all things AI and machine learning recently. Marie and Peter talk about their contributions and how AI/ML can help in research and science.  Links https://www.helmholtz.ai Helmholtz AI https://www.helmholtz...

In this first episode on the theme of diversity in tech I talk to  Cristin Merritt and Elsa Gonsiorowski from Women in HPC.  The aim is to raise awareness and give a voice and visibility to women and other underrepresented groups in high performance computing, as Cristin and Elsa explain during our conversation.  Links: https://womeninhpc.org The main website for Women in HPC https://n8cir.org.uk/...

In dieser Sonderausgabe berichte ich von der Unkonferenz des deutschen RSE Vereins, die zwischen dem 26. und 28. September in Jena stattfand.  Ca 60 Teilnehmer*innen trafen sich, um über Themen zu diskutieren, die sie in ihrem Alltag bewegen. Im Rahmen dieser Veranstaltung traf ich mich mit mehreren Organisatoren und Teilnehmern um über ihre Eindrücke und Beiträge zu sprechen. https://un-derse23.s...

In this second report on research software archives and directories I am talking to Jason Maassen from the eScience Centre in the Netherlands and Christian Meessen from the Helmholtz Association in Germany.  The eScience Centre developed the Research Software Directory (RSD) to show the impact software has on research. Researchers who code can register their software with the directory from all ov...

The HiddenRef https://hidden-ref.org in the UK is an initiative to push for considering a wider range of research outputs than publications, e.g. software and data. The members of the initiative organised an event on 21 September 2023 to bring together academic institutions, funders and publishers. The aim is to increase the amount of non-publication output for the next research assessment in the...

Julian arbeitet an der Universität Swansea in Wales in Grossbritannien. Zusammen mit Kollegen bemüht er sich darum, Ergebnisse von Simulationen und Berechnungen reproduzierbar zu machen. Erstaunlicherweise, sind wenige der Papers und Ergebnisse auch heute noch reproduzierbar und Julian und das Team bemühen sich darum das zu ändern.  In unserem Gespräch geht es auch ein wenig um den Physik Zusammen...

And it's this time of the year again, when the RSE communities meet for their annual gathering. The UK RSE Society held its annual conference in the Welsh city of Swansea this year. And in this episode you'll hear from a range of different participants and presenters. Here they are in the following order Jamie Quinn (University College London and trustee of the Society until this year) ...

I had the great pleasure to meet with Morane Gruenpeter and Benoît Chauvet from Software Heritage in Paris in 2023. Software Heritage aims to help preserve and archive software, not only for research but also for the private sector.  Unlike research software directories (from whom we will hear later this season), Software Heritage archives the actual code. Morane and Benoit take us through what&ap...

Despite the fact that Fortran has been around since the 1950s, it remains a very relevant programming language today and has an active community of keen engineers. In this episode I'll take a sweep from the origins of Fortran, how to deal with legacy (Fortran 77), how the language evolved to modern day use cases of Fortran. In the course of the episode you'll hear from Thomas Clune (NASA...

Let me interrupt your well-earned summer break for a brief episode and teaser: the first ever US RSE conference will be upon us between 16-18 October in Chicago, USA. I met with Sandra Gesing from the organising committee to talk about how the preparations are going and what you can expect from the conference. https://us-rse.org/usrse23/ - here the official US RSE Conference web-site http://sandra...

Dr Uwe Konrad von der Helmholtz Forschungsgemeinschaft stellt den neuen Preis für Softwareentwicklung vor. Obwohl der Preis im Moment nur für Helmholtzprojekte (oder solche mit hauptsächlicher Beteiligung von Helmholtz) zur Verfügung steht, hofft Dr Konrad dass der Preis Schule macht. Denn schliesslich wird es endlich Zeit, dass Software (und deren EntwicklerInnen) ernst genommen wird und als glei...

Peter Steinbach leitet eine Gruppe von Consultants am Helmholtz Institut in Dresden-Rossendorf. Die Gruppe ist Teil der Helmholtz AI Initiative und beratet WissenschafterInnen bzgl KI, Machine Learning usw.  Neben Fragen über KI in der Wissenschaft hat mich auch interessiert wie Datenwissenschaft mit Software Entwicklung zusammenhängt. Schliesslich sind mehr und mehr Research Software Engineers mi...

The guest for this episode is Teresa Gomez-Diaz from Université Paris Gustave-Eiffel, east of Paris, France. For a long time Teresa has been promoting Open Science and last year she talked on this show about the need for licences in research software. Teresa and her collaborator, Tomas Recio from the University Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid published two papers about Research Data and how to ensure t...

Nick Radcliffe, data scientist and entrepreneur, talks to us about the importance of test your data. As software engineers we are familiar with test driven development. Test driven data analysis puts the same emphasis on validating and testing data for your AI app. We also dive into the Python library of the same name tdda.  Links: https://linkedin.com/in/njradcliffe LinkedIn profile Nick Radcliff...

With Sam Mangham and Ed Bennett from the Uk RSE Conference organising committee. In this episode I want to take a look behind the scenes and find out what it takes to organise and run a conference. And how we participants can contribute to the success of this UK RSE Conference and future events! The conference takes place on the campus of Swansea University, UK and runs from 5-7 September. There a...

Fredo Erxleben vom Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf erzählt uns, wie er und seine KollegInnen WissenschaftlerInnen, DoktorantInnen und Postdocs Programmieren beibringt. Der Bedarf an Training ist riesig. Der Bedarf an Ausbildern auch.  In dieser Folge schauen wir ein wenig hinter die Kulissen und Fredo erzählt welche Herausforderungen es bei den Trainingsprogrammen gibt. Hier ein paar links: h...

JupyterCon 2023, the conference on all things Jupyter was held in Paris between 10-12 May 2023, followed by 2 days of hands-on "sprints".  Jupyter is a very popular open source platform with tools such as Jupyter notebook/lab and driven by a very active community. There were a number of excellent talks from a range of different subjects. I had the pleasure to meet and talk to a number of...

And in this last episode of our first ByteSized RSE season, we talk about the README file. My guest in this episode is Julian Lenz from the University in Swansea, UK who will take us through the importance of READMEs, what should go into them and at what stage should you create one (spoiler alert: a.s.a.p.).  Here are a few links you might find useful. Example READMEs and templates https://github....

This episode is about Quantum Computing and trying to look behind the hype around it. Helping me with that is Oliver Brown from the Edinburgh Parallel Computer Centre (EPCC), where he leads a quantum applications group. There is plenty of material on the subject out there. Here are some links, also mentioned in the episode: Quantum Computation and Quantum Information Textbook by Isaac Chuang and M...

Mit Kristine Schima-Voigt und Kay Liewald von der Niedersächsischen Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Göttingen.  In dieser Folge berichten Kristine und Kay von ihren Erfahrungen über die Einführung von Agilen Software Methoden, insbesondere Scrum, in ihrem Bereich der Softwareentwicklung. Agile Methoden wie Scrum, Kanban und andere finden eine immer weitere Verbreitung. Um so wichtiger ist es...

Research Software Engineering is a global movement. In this episode, I had the pleasure of talking to Saranjeet Kaur and Jyoti Boghal from India, how they built the RSE Asia network from scratch. In this conversation they take us through the journey of building a RSE community.  Here are some links: https://rse-asia.github.io/RSE_Asia/ The homepage for RSE Asia https://twitter.com/RSE_Asia Twitter...