Software Carpentry

Today I taught my first Software Carpentry talk, specifically the Intro to Shell. By most accounts it went well.

After going through the course today I think I’ve spotted two issues that I’ll try to fix upstream.

Firstly, command substitution is a concept that is covered, and used incorrectly IMO. Command substitution is fine when you know you’re only going to get back one value, e.g. running an identify on an image to get its dimensions. But when you’re getting back an arbitrary long list of files, you’re only option is to use xargs. Using xargs also means that we can drop another concept to teach.

The other thing that Isn’t covered, but I think should be, is reverse isearch of the history buffer, it’s something that I use in my day to day use of the shell, not quite as much as tab completion, but it’s certainly up there.

A third, minor issue that I need to check, but I don’t think brace expansion was shown in the loop example. I think this should be added, as the example I ended up using showed looping over strings, numbers and file globs, which is everything you ever really end up using.

Software Carpentry uses different coloured sticky notes attached to learners laptops to indicate how they’re going. It’s really useful as a presenter out the front, if there’s a sea of green you’re good to go, if there are a few reds with helpers you’re probably OK to continue, but if there’s too many reds, it’s time to stop and fix the problem. At the end of the session we ask people to give feedback, here for posterity:

Red (bad):

• Course really should be called Intro to Unix rather than bash
• use of microphone might be good (difficult to hear, especially when helpers answer questions around)
• Could have provided an intro into why  unix is advantageous over other programs
• grep(?) got a bit complicated, could have explained more
• start session with overview to set context eg. a graphic
• why does unix shell suck so much, I blame you personally

Orange(not so bad):

• maybe use the example data a bit more

Green(good):

• patient, very knowledgeable
• really knew his stuff
• information generally easy to follow. good pacing overall good
• good. referred to help files, real world this as go to for finding stuff out (mistranscribed i’m sure)
•  good pace, good basis knowledge is taught