Posted by m.jackson on 29 June 2012 - 8:38am

The Software Sustainability Institute and Software Carpentry are working together to develop a driver’s licence for researchers who wish to use the DiRAC (Distributed Research using Advanced Computing) integrated supercomputing facility.

The driver's licence will be used to show that a researcher has the programming skills needed to use DiRAC productively. The hour-long test, which will include writing, coding, and interactive elements, will focus on fundamental skills including version control, unit testing, writing maintainable code, using Makefiles, and code review. Trials will begin this summer, and the completed test will be presented to DiRAC in September 2012.