Software Carpentry

The Software Sustainability Institute are the coordinators of Software Carpentry in the UK. We help organise Software Carpentry boot camps for the UK research community. Software Carpentry teaches researchers software skills that contribute to correct, reproducible and reusable research.

What is Software Carpentry?

The goal of Software Carpentry is to make scientists and engineers more productive by teaching them basic software development skills, so they can get more done in less time, and with less pain. These skills also allow researchers to have confidence that their results are reliable and to produce code that is not only correct, but easy to understand, fix and use.

Rather than adopt a position of saying that these skills are good because software developers say they are, Software Carpentry teaches these skills in the context of how they contribute to correct, reproducible and reusable research. At the heart of Software Carpentry are boot camps, 2-3 day long, highly-interactive workshops, interleaving short tutorials with hands-on practical exercises in a supportive and collaborative environment.

For more about Software Carpentry, please see the FAQ.

Why is the Software Sustainability Institute involved with Software Carpentry?

Software Carpentry shares our vision of wanting to help researchers confidently and efficiently develop software that contributes to correct, reproducible and reusable research.

We became involved in Software Carpentry in 2011 by developing online lectures in advanced shell tricks and systems programming in Python. In April 2012, we participated in the first general UK boot camp, led by Software Carpentry's creator, Greg Wilson, at University College London. A fortnight later, in conjunction with the Digital Institute at Newcastle University and SoundSoftware, we delivered the first boot camp to be run entirely by UK tutors, independent of Greg Wilson's team. We have since instructed upon the majority of boot camps run in the UK as well as helped to deliver boot camps in Europe and the USA. We also wrote a comprehensive guide on how to run a boot camp.

In February 2013, we volunteered to coordinate Software Carpentry activities in the UK. We do this by helping promote Software Carpentry and helping researchers to bring Software Carpentry to their institution, community or collaboration.

"We are pleased to have the Software Sustainability Institute take over coordination of UK boot camps. The Institute shares many goals and values with Software Carpentry, and we believe this partnership will benefit both organisations." - Greg Wilson, Founder of Software Carpentry.

What we offer

We help UK researchers organise boot camps for their research groups, institutions or communities. We can help in forming a syllabus, introducing researchers to instructors from Software Carpentry's pool of volunteers, advising on publicity, and providing support in all aspects of organising, or hosting, a boot camp.

If you'd like us to help you organise a boot camp, if you're interested in becoming an instructor or helper, or you want any other information please contact us.

• For upcoming boot camps in which we are involved, take a look at our events page.
• For upcoming boot camps around the world, check out Software Carpentry.