Code for Thought

Graph Theory has been around for a long time. Its use in computing has found a number of applications, most prominently social networks. In this episode I will be talking with Ben Steer and Gabor Szarnyas about their experiences in working with graphs. In particular: how to assess the performance of graphs, their use in science and research, the state of graph query languages and more. Here are a...

Here is the final SeptembRSE special episode. And this time I'll be talking to Apeksha, James and Natalia from Amazon Web Services (AWS). We touch on a variety of subjects: e.g. how to come to grips with the ever increasing complexity of what cloud services like AWS offer today (hint: start simple & experiment). Natalia talks about her internship with AWS and I like James' soundbite,...

Meet Brad Tipp from Microsoft. Brad thinks that research software engineering has a crucial role to close the ever growing skills gap. The gap between demand for more research and research results and the ever increasing technical landscape that helps make it happen. This is not just a question of using cloud services but also a question of changing the mindset in training the next generation of s...

This year's annual conference on Research Software Engineering (see link below) is upon us at the moment. And this year, SeptembRSE is running online only.  On this occasion, Code for Thought is throwing some light on some of the sponsors of the SeptembRSE, without whom none of this would happen. In the first of these extra episode I have the pleasure of talking to Richard Pitts, Alison Derbe...

Welcome back to Season 2 of Code for Thought! Reproducibility is hard and no one knows this better than Heidi Seibold. In this episode Heidi and I talk about the new reproducibility network she helped building in Germany and the many challenges we all face when trying to reproduce scientific output and papers. Find the German reproducibility network on https://reproducibilitynetwork.de Or find the...

Have you thought about turning your PhD and research into a business? You are not alone. It can be a daunting task. But there is help at hand in form of support programmes and organisations. Of course, not all of them will end up being successful. But as I hope you will hear in this episode you may want to give it a try because, after all, nothing ventured, nothing gained. In the first part of thi...

This episode is about mobile apps in research software engineering. Not surprisingly, there is an increasing demand for mobile apps by researchers. In this SORSE event from February 2021 I am talking to Adrian Harwood, Patricia Barnby and Mark Turner how their teams at the University of Manchester and the University of Newcastle deal with this. We also talk about a subject that will sound very fam...

Whereas the last episode focused on architecture at enterprise scale, this episode is looking at architecture for software solutions.  I was fortunate enough to meet with 3 solutions architects from Amazon Web Services in the US: Akash Gheewala, Ro Mullier and John Majarwitz. As we discuss in this episode, the path to become an architect varies: whether it is moving into the role straight away or...

Architecture at large scale, such as in enterprises and organisations with complex infrastructure, puts very different demands on the role than being a software engineer or even solutions architect. For sure, you will need solid technical skills. But the ability to convince and drive solutions become more and more important.  In this episode I talk to three ex-colleagues of mine from Elsevier - wh...

This is the first part on software architecture. Meet James Smithies from Kings College in London (UK), Steve Crouch from the Software Sustainability Institute/Southampton (UK) and Keith Gutfreund from Elsevier, Boston (USA). Together we explore, what architecture means in software development, both in the private sector and in research; how - and if - architecture fits in with research software e...

In this episode we continue our journey into the Julia programming language and dive a little deeper into some aspects of Julia. For that reason I met with 2 engineers: Jarvis Frost from Imperial College and Lyndon White from InveniaLabs. Both wrote a lot of Julia code and we discuss some of the projects they have worked on. The projects in question: Jarvis' project example: Polaron Mobility...

In 2009 a group of engineers Jeff Bezanson, Stefan Karpinski, Viral Shah and Alan Edelman set out to develop a new language that is open source, easy to use but also highly performant. They called this language "Julia" and it appeared ca 2012.  Since then the community of Julia developers has grown year on year, with some exciting projects happening at e.g. Nasa but also commercial produ...

The Nordic RSE network held a 3 day workshop in December 2020 and I was delighted to record a panel discussion on the subject of 'Research Software Engineering careers and their position in academia'. Despite the fact that some countries established roles for research software engineers (e.g. the UK, US and France), in many places aspiring RSEs face obstacles and hurdles to turn their pa...

Talking about sociology in software development is rare. But that is exactly what happened at a meet-up I went to in Paris in 2019. Fabien Lamarque, software craftsman from Bordeaux, gave a presentation on what sociology can teach us in terms of team dynamics and team structure. Specifically, the work of Pierre Bourdieu, a leading French philosopher and sociologist.  In this episode we talk about...

It's publish or perish for researchers and scientists. In addition to that many researchers and scientists from African countries struggle to get their work published and recognised. The team around  https://info.africarxiv.org AfricarXiV work hard to address that. Here are a few links mentioned in this episode you may want to check: https://www.stm-assoc.org The International Association of...

Most of today's research depends on software. So, reproducing science and research results is ever more important. For this episode I have been following a 'ReproHack' event held at the University College of London in late 2020. This event was the first of its kind held at UCL. In particular, since - due to the coronavirus pandemic - it was run entirely online. Listen to find out mo...

In this episode I speak with Richard Gunn and Sarah King from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Recognising the work research software engineers do is one thing. But funding and supporting career paths in it quite another.  In the UK,  the EPSRC together with the Science and Technology Facilities Council  (STFC) have provided fellowship programmes to help getting role...

Welcome to Code for Thought. The new podcast about software, engineering, research and anything in between. In this episode I want to give you some background of research software engineering (RSE) and a taster for things to come. If you want to find out more about RSEs and what we do look up the following links the Software Sustainability Institute  https://www.software.ac.uk  the (UK) Society fo...