What could programmers build to help scientists use computers in their day-to-day work? The answer might surprise you.

1. How to Become
Rich, Famous, and
Popular While Using
Your Programming
Skills to Make the
World a Better
Place
(Maybe)
Greg Wilson

2. 2
5-15% use GPU clusters
to analyze petabytes
in the cloud
85-95% send each
other spreadsheets
by email
Scientists

3. 3
It Is Therefore Obvious That...
We should put more computing in the curriculum!
But it's already full

4. 4
It Is Therefore Obvious That...
And even if we did...
...who would teach those classes?

5. 5
If you build a man a fire,
you'll keep him warm for a night.
If you set a man on fire,
you'll keep him warm for the rest of his life.
— Terry Pratchett

6. 6
What We Teach
Unix shell
Version control
Python/R/MATLAB
SQL
Make

7. 7
What We Actually Teach
Unix shell => Task automation
Version control => Track and share work
Python/R/MATLAB => Modular programming
SQL => Data management
Make => Reproducibility

8. 8
How We Teach
● Peer instructors
● Teach in pairs
● Learners use their own machines
● Live coding
● Sticky notes
● Collaborative note-taking
● Iterate, iterate, iterate...

9. 9
How It's Going
2011-11-07
2012-07-19
2013-01-06
2013-04-08
2013-06-24
2013-09-23
2014-01-08
2014-03-18
2014-06-15
2014-08-06
2014-09-27
2014-12-14
2015-02-09
2015-03-30
2015-05-25
2015-07-06
2015-08-27
2015-10-17
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
Workshops

10. 10
How It's Going
Workshops

11. 11
How It's Going
Learners
2011-11-07
2012-05-16
2012-10-08
2012-11-30
2013-02-06
2013-04-18
2013-05-30
2013-07-18
2013-09-21
2013-11-14
2014-01-18
2014-02-24
2014-04-29
2014-06-16
2014-07-19
2014-08-23
2014-09-24
2014-11-07
2014-12-18
2015-01-29
2015-03-02
2015-03-30
2015-04-29
2015-06-04
2015-06-29
2015-08-03
2015-09-06
2015-10-01
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000

12. 12
How It's Going
Instructors
2012-05-27
2013-07-20
2013-11-17
2014-04-19
2014-07-07
2014-08-07
2014-10-03
2014-11-05
2014-11-13
2014-11-20
2014-11-27
2014-12-13
2015-01-07
2015-02-06
2015-03-01
2015-03-12
2015-04-20
2015-05-26
2015-06-12
2015-06-26
2015-07-05
2015-07-10
2015-07-14
2015-07-28
2015-09-02
2015-09-25
2015-10-13
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500

13. 13
How It's Going
Instructors

14. 14
What We've Accomplished
● Honestly don't know
● Anecdotally, save people 10-20% of
their time for the rest of their careers
● And prepare them for petabytes and
clouds

15. 15
What I've Learned
1. We know a lot
about learning
2. Most people
would rather fail
than change
3. There are lots of
gaps to fill

16. 16
For Example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LbuoxAy56o

17. 17
●
Today's MOOC platforms don't support PI
●
Piotr Banaszkiewicz showed it's possible
github.com/pbanaszkiewicz/peer-instruction
●
Opportunity #1

18. 18
The Jupyter Notebook
Text, math, code,
and images
What hypertext
was meant to
be

19. 19
The Jupyter Notebook
{
"cell_type": "code",
"execution_count": 9,
"metadata": {
"collapsed": false
},
"outputs": [
{
"data": {
"image/png":"iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAArMAAAJA
CAYAAACe4e6sAAAABHNCSVQICAgIfAhkiAAAAAlwSFlzn
AAALEgAACxIB0t1+/AAAIABJREFUeJzs3XdYFFfbBvB7qSIsH
...

20. 20
The Jupyter Notebook
{
"cell_type": "code",
"execution_count": 9,
"metadata": {
"collapsed": false
},
"outputs": [
{
"data": {
"image/png":"iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAArMAAAJA
CAYAAACe4e6sAAAABHNCSVQICAgIfAhkiAAAAAlwSFlzn
AAALEgAACxIB0t1+/AAAIABJREFUeJzs3XdYFFfbBvB7qSIsH
...
Good luck
diffing and
merging this.

21. 21
It Doesn't Have to Be This Way
Tavish Armstrong and others
nbdiff.org
Opportunity #2

22. 22
Generalizes Well
First-class support for diffing and
merging spreadsheets will get more
scientists to use version control than
anything else we can do.

23. 23
Generalizes Well
First-class support for diffing and
merging spreadsheets will get more
scientists to use version control than
anything else we can do.
3 developers x 8 months (?)
(even if it's optimistic...)

24. 24
Speaking of Version Control
● Git is an awful tool
● git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net
● But it's the price people have to pay in
order to use GitHub

25. 25
Speaking of Version Control
● A rational re-design of Git is possible
and worthwhile
● Opportunity #3
● Also generalizes well
Andreas Stefik and Susanna Siebert: "An Empirical
Investigation into Programming Language Syntax."
ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 13(4), Nov.
2013.

26. 26
A Puzzle
● Thousands contribute
patches to open source
software projects
● Millions have edited
Wikipedia
● Why don't people build
lessons this way?

27. 27
All Together Now
● We've shown it can be done
● And that it's useful
● This presents more opportunities

28. 28
A Small Part of the Reason
● Slideshow formats
aren't diffable either
● But HTML alternatives
are impoverished

29. 29
A Small Part of the Reason
● Neither can create web-
native videos
● Proof: pause a video, highlight the
text being displayed, and copy it

30. 30
Solution: Browsercast
HTML slideshow...
...with start times for slides...
...and a player that syncs with audio
github.com/twitwi/deck.browsercast.js-demo
(Bonus marks for a GUI timestamp editor)

31. 31
Advantages
● Plays everywhere
● Mobile-friendly
● Accessible!
● Searchable!
● Diffable! (ish)

32. 32
To Sum Up
● First-class support for peer instruction
● Diff for all! (Excel first)
● A rational reconstruction of Git
● Browsercast
● Rocket science
● Fill in the gaps

33. 33
For More Information
http://software-carpentry.org
gvwilson@software-carpentry.org
@swcarpentry
Thank You