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Explore every episode of the podcast Code for Thought

Dive into the complete episode list for Code for Thought. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.

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TitlePub. DateDuration
[EN] Enhancing Science - the eScience Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands19 Nov 202400:34:54

English Edition: 

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[FR] Le calcul quantique à GENCI - Sabine Mehr et Félix Givois12 Nov 202400:38:17

L'édition française:  On a beaucoup de promesse sur l'usage du calcul quantique. Ghislain Vaillant discute avec Sabine Mehr et Félix Givois de GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif) pour jeter un coup d'œil aux coulisses de cette technologie fascinante. 

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[EN] Going Large - CERN VM/VMFS - Laura Promberger, Jakob Blomer16 Sep 202400:32:59

ENGLISH EDITION: There are a lot of "large" things at CERN, including the amount of data produced and the software needed to manage and analyse them. In this episode I talk to Laura Promberger and Jakob Blomer from the CERN virtual machine/file system VM/VMFS project about how this set of tools is helping researchers. 
And not just physicists, as CERN VM/VMFS is also used in other areas of the high performance computing community.

Links:

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Exploring our experience meditation18 Nov 202200:09:59

As part of the Software Sustainability Institute's Research Software Camp on supporting mental health, SSI Research Associate and accredited mindfulness teacher Anita Banerji delivers this 10 minute meditation.

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Short breathing space18 Nov 202200:04:10

As part of the Software Sustainability Institute's Research Software Camp on supporting mental health, SSI Research Associate and accredited mindfulness teacher Anita Banerji delivers this short breathing space mindfulness exercise.

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ByteSized: Code Reviews with GitHub17 Nov 202200:19:36

In this episode of ByteSized we look at code reviews and GitHub. 
Code reviews have a long tradition (see the link to Michael Fagan's paper from 1976 below). 
Modern code management tools like GitHub, GitLab and others provide features to integrate code reviews with your overall development and deployment workflow.

In this episode we look specifically at GitHub and how you can use the mechanism of 'pull requests' to start a conversation and review with your colleagues.

In my conversation with Thibault Lestang from Imperial, we discuss what to look out for when doing a code review with your colleagues. And the fact that reviews are still useful, even if you are not using Github. 

Links


Byte-sized RSE is presented in collaboration with the UNIVERSE-HPC project.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/computational-methods/rse/events/byte-sized-rse/ 

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Citizen Science and Software08 Nov 202200:36:23

Bastian Greshake-Tzovaras and I were accepted as Fellows of the Software Sustainability Institute around the same time. Bastian, trained in biology, has done a lot of work on "citizen science" and the Open Humans platform. 
The latter of which we discuss in a bit more detail as well as two projects Bastian has been working on.

Links


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Event organisation with the Software Sustainability Institute02 Nov 202200:24:40

In this episode we speak to Shoaib Sufi and Rachael Ainsworth from the Software Sustainability Institute’s Community team about their Event Organisation Guide and some upcoming SSI events.

The Event Organisation Guide brings together years of experience of the SSI in organising events. It covers different stages of the event organisation process from idea through feasibility, sign off, running your event project and closing down. The guide can be tailored to your needs, giving hints and tips on varied subjects such as venue, catering, budget, agenda, publicity and more. 

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Software Horror Stories: Fire in the Lab! 31 Oct 202200:07:42

In this Halloween special, Colin Sauze, a Research Software Engineer at the University of Aberystwyth, tells us about when his code set the lab on fire. Hear about what went wrong, how his colleagues and superiors reacted, and tips for our listeners in this second edition of the Software Horror Stories series.

If you have comments or suggestions, please tag @Code_4_Thought on Twitter or email us at info@software.ac.uk.

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ByteSized: Software Licences26 Oct 202200:18:43

This first episode of “Code for Thought ByteSized” is based on the first session in the Byte-sized RSE interactive research software training series.

The session, looking at open source software licensing, took place online on Tuesday 18th October.

Byte-sized RSE is presented in collaboration with the UNIVERSE-HPC project.

Disclaimer: The presenters and content producers for this podcast are not lawyers and do not have any legal background. The material in this podcast is not legal advice and must not be considered as such. There may be errors and we accept no responsibility or liability for actions you take based on this material. The podcast is intended to provide some high-level general background on open source software licensing and to raise awareness of the area. The content is based on our understanding and experience as research software engineers but this may not be correct in all cases. If you have questions or are unsure about any legal aspects relating to licensing of software that you are making available to others, talk to a legal professional.

Some useful links

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Live from the RSE Conference 202217 Oct 202200:47:52

After 3 years, the RSE Conference returned to an in-person event, this time held at the Frederick Douglas Centre in Newcastle, UK.
Apart from meeting people that I only met online so far, it was also the first RSE conference for me personally and the first time I recorded with a live audience. 

The subject of the event was: RSE the next 10 years. Now that we passed the 10th anniversary of the birth of research software engineering as we know - what will the next 10 years bring.

With me on the panel were

  • Idil Ozdemir (University College London)
  • Simon Hettrick (Software Sustainability Institute)
  • Jennifer Richards (University of Newcastle)
  • Anika Cawthorn (University College London)
  • Michael James (EPSRC - UKRI)


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In Conversation with Ben Goldacre26 Sep 202200:45:32

For this episode I am very excited to talk to Ben Goldacre. Ben has an outstanding career in medicine, science and science communication and is the author of many articles and books, like e.g. "Bad Science". Today is he running the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science in Oxford, UK.

I met with Ben Goldacre earlier this year (2022) to discuss his report on 'Better, Broader, Safer: Using Health Data for Research and Analysis'. This report, published in April 2022 and commissioned by the UK government, is based on more than 300 individual interviews and many more with key stakeholder groups. 
One of the key findings and recommendations is the need for proper software engineering. Needless to say that RSEs play an important part in this. 
In fact, Ben has been a strong supporter and promoter for Research Software Engineering as well as open science and software. 

Here a few links


Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Meet the SSI Fellows: Sophia Batchelor13 Sep 202200:14:30

2022 Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Fellow Sophia Batchelor speaks to SSI Communications Officer Jacalyn Laird about her Fellowship plans.

Find out more about the Turing Way and their online Collaboration Cafe.

Follow Sophia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brainonsilicon

Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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[FR] L'apprentissage automatique et la reproductibilité - avec Pascal Monasse (LIGM)09 Sep 202400:42:36

L'édition française:
Ça y est - le premier épisode de Code for Thought en français. 

Comment reproduire et évaluer l'apprentissage automatique? Publier les résultats de recherche avec les données et le code source? Avec Pascal Monasse, chercheur chez IMAGINE (Laboratoire d'informatique Gaspard Monge) et éditeur de journal IPOL - Image Processing On Line. 

Animé par: Ghislain Vaillant. Réalisé par: Peter Schmidt

Liens:

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Make Software Free (Again)05 Sep 202200:37:06

Welcome back to another season of Code for Thought. And I'd like to kick it off with an interview with Bastien Guerry. Working for the French government, Bastien promotes the use, creation and distribution of Free Software. And in our conversation we discuss the four freedoms as defined by the Free Software Foundation.

Bastien is also an active member of the Emacs community and a contributor to one of the modes: Org mode - a note taking facility. Having used Emacs for a long time it's good to see that it is alive and well. 


Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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The Hidden REF02 Aug 202200:25:03

The way that the Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise is conducted overlooks many of the people who are vital to the success of research. In this episode we hear from Gemma Derrick, part of the organising committee for the Hidden REF, which recognises all research outputs and every role that makes research possible.

Publications rarely name all of the people who make research possible, yet these were the basis for 97% of the outputs submitted to REF 2014. This is not the fault of the REF itself: the guidelines allow submission into a wide range of categories, from software to musical compositions. But with so much funding reliant on the results, universities are highly risk-averse in what they will submit. Publications are well understood in academia, so they are almost the only output submitted to REF – and this means the work of many people goes unrecognised. The goal of the Hidden REF is to celebrate all research outputs and the people who make them possible.

Visit the Hidden REF website: https://hidden-ref.org/.

Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Open Science and Research Software18 Jul 202200:34:17

Open Science is a broad term. While in Paris in 2022 I had the pleasure of meeting Teresa Gomez-Diaz from the Université Gustave Eiffel for my very first face to face interview. In it we discuss what the term Open Science entails and how free/open software fit into it. 

For some years, Teresa Gomez-Diaz has been working with others to arrive at a common understanding of the term. Together with her collaborators they provided a definition that rests on three pillars: Open Access (publication), Free/Open Software, Open Data.

As for research software, Teresa stresses the importance of software licensing. And in the course we touch on different strategies how that can be accomplished with GNU GPL licence (strong copyleft) and other Free/Open Source Software licences. 

Here are some references for this episode, with papers by Teresa Gomez-Diaz and co-authors. The Twitter link below is with respect to the "mushroom" of Open Science we discuss  during the episode.

The Unesco recommendation on Open Science can be found on

A definition of 'copyleft'


Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Meet the SSI Fellows: Jesper Dramsch05 Jul 202200:18:40

2022 Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Fellow Jesper Dramsch speaks to SSI Communications Officer Jacalyn Laird about their fellowship plans and experience of applying.

Jesper's SSI Application video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxMZxbui4Bg
Newsletter: https://dramsch.net/newsletter
Linkedin: https://dramsch.net/linkedin
Twitter: https://dramsch.net/twitter
Espanso text-expander: https://espanso.org/

Tweet your comments or questions @SoftwareSaved using #CodeForThought!

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Drones and Ecology27 Jun 202200:33:31

Meet Isla Myers-Smith from the University of Edinburgh, who describes herself as a global change ecologist. Her work focuses on tundra ecosystems. 
To measure changes in plants - shrubs in this case - the team collects data on the ground as well as from drones and satellite data. That involves quite a lot of effort and requires technical skills. Skills that Uni courses in ecology (and other fields) typically don't prepare you for. 
Being largely self-taught, Isla made it her mission to help other early career researchers ramp up skills they will need in their future career.
Today, Isla is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow and she and her colleagues manage a drone network called HiLDEN. 

Here are a few links:

Follow Isla and Team Shrubs on Twitter


Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Real Time in Nuclear Fusion06 Jun 202200:32:22

Over the past year or two nuclear fusion made its way into the headlines not least in early 2022, when researchers at the JET (Joint European Torus) experiment reported a breakthrough in terms of generating energy.

Finding new and sustainable energy sources is more important than ever. And what better way than to harness energy like our very own sun does.
Enter Dr Adam Stephen, senior software engineer at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s lab in Culham. Adam and his team and collaborators are working hard to overcome the engineering challenges and help make nuclear fusion a safe and sustainable way of producing energy. Amongst the work they do are building and designing real time systems and in my conversation we talk about some of the challenges they face.

Links to follow up on the conversation


Selection of general announcements from 2022


Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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By Jupyter!23 May 202200:30:25

Jupyter is a well known tool in the education and research sector (and in the private sector, too). Jupiter can also be used in a collaborative environment, be that for teaching purposes or work within a research/product team. With Jupyter Hubs, you can run Jupyter in a variety of different environments and cloud services. 
Meet Dr Sarah Gibson, who works at the International Interactive Computing Collaboration - or 2i2c for short. She is also involved in the myBinder project as well as being a Fellow at the Software Sustainability Institute. 
At 2i2c, Sarah and her team help design, develop and manage Jupyter Hubs, so that researchers, developers and teachers can focus on their projects. 
Sarah takes us through the challenges of managing open source projects and the benefits of Jupyter Hubs.


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Meet the SSI Fellows: James Byrne and Tom Russell10 May 202200:13:59

2022 Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Fellows James Byrne and Tom Russell speak to SSI Communications Officer Jacalyn Laird about their fellowship plans.

Find out more about James' work at the  British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Artificial Intelligence Group and see the BAS blog.

Find out more about Tom's work on the Colouring Cities GitHub.

Tweet your comments or questions @SoftwareSaved using #CodeForThought!

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A Museum For All25 Apr 202200:35:06

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is the museum for art and design. It spans nearly 5000 years of human history and has well over 1 million objects. 
The Victoria and Albert museum was also one of the first to be accessible on the internet. Which is, why it gives me great pleasure to talk to Kati Price who leads the digital media and publishing team at the V&A. 
The V&A catalogue is accessed not only by the occasional visitors, hobbyists but also by scientists and researchers. Keeping the digital estate up to date and compelling for users is a challenge and Kati Price takes us through how she and her team approach this in their work. 
Think of "user centred".

If you have a chance to check out the vast offerings of the V&A check out the links below.
The V&A also has APIs and GitHub repos which people can access. 
Having said this, I would encourage you to go and visit the V&A in person if you can. 

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Meet the SSI Fellows: Connah Kendrick12 Apr 202200:10:32

Meet Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) 2022 Fellow Connah Kendrick as he tells SSI Communications Officer Jacalyn Laird about his plans for his fellowship relating to digitising museum artefacts. 

You can contact Connah by email Connah.kendrick@mmu.ac.uk and follow him on Twitter @connahkendrick.

Tweet your comments or questions @SoftwareSaved using #CodeForThought!

(Apologies for the audio quality issues at the beginning).

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[EN] Beyond Open Research - Imperial College London02 Sep 202400:35:12

ENGLISH EDITION: Beyond Open Research is a project at Imperial College London (UK), that tries to change research culture more open and transparent. I met with Dr Hamid Khan, who was leading the project and Prof Julie McCann, Vice-Dean for the Faculty of Engineering to find out more about exactly how they want to go "beyond" open research. 

A few links


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Putting the Digital into Humanities04 Apr 202200:32:46

Meet James Baker, newly appointed director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton in the UK. Digital Humanities covers a wide area of different disciplines and James has his work cut out for him to help and bring it all together. 
By creating "collaborative spaces" we can bring experts together from different disciplines. An opportunity to innovate and create. But facilitating this is hard and in our conversation we touch on some of the challenges.

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Happy Birthday RSE22 Mar 202200:38:29

The term research software engineering is celebrating its 10th anniversary today. It was coined during a Collaborations workshop on 21 March 2012. I was privileged to meet with 7 of the participants who took part in this workshop and together we talk how it all came about.
My guests are:

  • Neil Chue Hong MPhys FBCS, Director, Software Sustainability Institute and Senior 
  • Prof. Simon Hettrick, Deputy Director, The Software Sustainability Institute
  • Robert Haines, Head of Research IT, Uni Manchester
  • Dirk Gorissen, Product Manager
  • Rob Baxter, Director of Data Services, EPCC, University of Edinburgh
  • Ilian Todorov,  STFC UKRI
  • James Hetherington FBCS, Director, Advanced Research Computing Centre, University College London

But it's not just walking down memory lane. Even though, RSEs are now found in a number of research centres and universities across different countries, there is still lots to do. The challenges ahead range from creating attractive and sustainable career paths, securing funding, improving on diversity and others.

And finally, after 2 years of pandemic, it is great to see the announcement for an in-person RSE conference again. And this year, it will be in Newcastle, UK.



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Software Horror Stories: Rebooting gone wrong!08 Mar 202200:08:36

Yo Yehudi, Executive Director at Open Life Science,  joins Selina Aragon, Software Sustainability Institute Communications Lead and host of the series, as the first guest of Software Horror Stories.

Yo talks through one of the scariest moments of her life as an RSE, how she fixed it, and her tips to overcome your very own horror stories.

Based on the Coding Confessions project, Software Horror Stories shares people’s unintended oversights when coding and how this impacted their research. The aim is to help normalise mistakes and emphasise how they’re a necessary evil of the learning journey in developing software for research. Look out for new episodes each month!

Tweet your comments or questions @SoftwareSaved using #CodeForThought!

Would you like to share your very own horror story? Get in touch at s.aragon@software.ac.uk

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To Agile or Not to Agile22 Feb 202200:31:38

Agile software development practices and methodologies have been around for a while and have indeed become mainstream. In particular Scrum and its many variants. In this episode I talk to Raj Heda, who helps organisations roll out agile methodologies. I was interested to find out, why "Agile" has become so successful, and what it is organisations need to look out for when they roll it out.

I also wrote a brief blog post on Medium on the subject: https://medium.com/@pweschmidt/is-agile-still-agile-a13b20230bc 

There is plenty of material on agile methodologies out there. But here are a few pointers, some of which were also mentioned in the interview

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So, what's new?15 Feb 202200:04:14

Code for Thought is one year old! (Did I hear anyone say - Hurrah?)
Time to think what we can do for you in the coming weeks, months and beyond. In this short trailer, Selina and Jacalyn from the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) https://www.software.ac.uk
and I talk about some of the new content that will be heading your way.

In future we will be ca 10min episodes as well as longer ones, the latter ca every 3 weeks:

  • meet the new/existing SSI fellows
  • hear some truly gruesome horror stories (albeit about software)
  • get some news
  • and also get more in depth and longer interviews and coverages


If you have a story you would like to share, or you want to contribute and host an episode, do not hesitate to get in touch with one of us

Selina s.aragon@epcc.ed.ac.uk
Jacalyn J.Laird@epcc.ed.ac.uk
Peter peter.schmidt@ucl.ac.uk



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The Mantis Sees it All01 Feb 202200:36:49

In this episode we take a trip into the exciting world of insects - mantises to be precise. Prof Jenny Read and her colleague Dr Vivek Nityananda from Newcastle University in the UK have been conducting some exciting research into 3D vision of these iconic animals.
I have come across their research through an article in the New York Times and was hooked.

3D vision in insects? Yes, dear listeners, you read that right. Mantises have stereoscopic vision as well but not quite like humans. 
Given the fact that mantises are so much smaller and still capable of 3D vision - is there something we can learn from them with regards to practical applications and robotics?

Here some links you might want to check out:







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Join The Fellowship11 Jan 202200:32:34

Welcome to Season 3 of Code for Thought!
In this episode, I met with 7 of the new EPSRC fellows in the UK. EPSRC stands for Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The EPSRC fellowship has been pivotal in putting research software engineering (RSE) firmly on the map in universities and research centres. RSE has become a recognised role not only in the UK, but also in an increasing number of countries around the globe.

I had the pleasure and privilege to meet with some of the new fellows last autumn. 
As you will hear from my discussion with Eilis, Heather, Carlin, Tom, Jamie, Peter and Ed - they bring a lot of interesting and different hopes, ideas and aspirations to their fellowship. 

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Keeping It Together 07 Dec 202100:35:44

Mental health in the workplace is often ignored or sidelined. Not to mention that it is difficult to talk about it in the first place.
And yet, pressures in our work environment has been rising, not least because of the pandemic. How  we can look out for ourselves and others is a question I'll be discussing with Graham McCartney and Dave Horsfall. Dave and Graham are leading the UK charity Jonathan's Voice, which was born under tragic circumstances. 

As Graham says in the podcast: if you have difficulties in coping, don't struggle alone. Reach out! 
Your employer may provide services such as mental health aiders or services provided by your HR department.
In addition to that most if not all countries provide helplines and advice on mental health. In the UK e.g. there are the 


Here are a few links you might find useful




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Making Machine Learning Reproducible23 Nov 202100:30:39

Reproducibility efforts are community efforts, as this episode's guest Grigori Fursin makes very clear. But you also need the tools. 
For some time, Grigori worked on the Collective Knowledge (CK) Framework to help researchers and machine learning practitioners get the best out of their solutions. 
In this episode we talk about the challenges you face when trying to evaluate machine learning applications and taking them to production. And how tools like CK Framework and others can help.


  • https://mlcommons.org/en/ - ML Commons, a non-profit organisation & community for tools around machine learning applications: in particular ML Perf for performance testing


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Learning to Code at the Research Software Camp12 Nov 202100:34:04

Four researchers, from various career stages and research areas, took their first steps into coding in R and Python throughout September and October 2021, as part of the Learning to Code mentorship programme. The programme was an initiative brought by the Software Sustainability Institute's (SSI) Research Software Camp: Beyond the Spreadsheet.

In this episode, we (Selina Aragon, SSI Communications Lead, and Jacalyn Laird, SSI Communications Officer) spoke to the four researchers who volunteered to take part in the mentorship programme. Emma, Amirah, Yenn and Rebecca talk us through their experience over the last two months, what they learnt, and how having a mentor impacted on their journey. Listen as they share their reasons to join the programme and the tips they have for other beginner coders.

As part of the Research Software Camp, we've signposted to resources for people learning to code. It's likely that we'll be running this mentorship programme again, so if you're interested, sign up to receive updates.

About Research Software Camps
 
The Software Sustainability Institute runs free online Research Software Camps twice a year over the course of two weeks. Each Camp focusses on introducing and exploring a topic around research software, thus starting discussions among various research communities. 

Our latest Research Software Camp: Beyond the Spreadsheet took place from 1 to 12 November 2021. 



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[EN] Teaser Season 8 - Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome26 Aug 202400:10:59

ENGLISH EDITION: Welcome back to Season 8 of Code for Thought. Just before we dive into the new season, this trailer will tell you what lies ahead between September and December 2024.


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Make It Sing!09 Nov 202100:33:23

This episode is all about music and the role software and technologies such as AI and machine learning play in creative processes. 
Meet Emily Howard, David De Roure and Chris Melen from the Centre for Practice & Research in Science and Music (PRiSM) at the Royal Northern College of Music. They talk about how they use AI in their creative processes. 
One of the key tools the team has developed and uses for experimenting and composing music is an open source tool called PRiSM SampleRNN - and you will be able to listen to some of the audio samples. 

Occasionally, you hear concerns about AI replacing humans - or in this case - composers and performers. But that's not the case as David, Emily and Chris reassure us. Rather, it is a new tool that can enhance and augment our creativity. 
And furthermore:

“If society is going to have AI so pervasively embedded then we really have to understand what it means to be a creative human being in the context of AI”

Links






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Is Research Software A Tangled Mess?25 Oct 202100:28:14

Sometime in early 2021 there was a bit of excitement on the Research Software Engineering Slack channel. It was all about a blog post called: "Research Software code is likely to remain a tangled mess". The author, Derek Jones, is quite critical of what we are doing with software in research. I accept that not everybody is a fan of Research Software Engineering and I reached out to Derek, who kindly agreed to talk to me for this episode.
In our discussion we touch on a number of subjects, from sustainability, best practices to testing.

Links:

http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2021/02/21/research-software-code-is-likely-to-remain-a-tangled-mess/

Derek's book on Evidence Based Software Engineering

http://www.knosof.co.uk/ESEUR/

Leprechauns of Software Engineering (mentioned in the discussion)

https://leanpub.com/leprechauns


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The Joy of Graphs04 Oct 202100:37:00

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 few links you might find useful:

- https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.1201/b16132-3  Handbook of Graphs, a nice overview.
- https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.06171 The Future is Big Graphs! An overview of graph processing systems - for which Gabor is co-author
- https://github.com/GraphBLAS/LAGraph LAGraph is a draft library plus a test harness for collecting algorithms that use the GraphBLAS
- https://www.tigergraph.com Tiger Graph database
- https://neo4j.com Neo4j a popular graph DB
- https://opencypher.org Open Cypher - the open source graph query language
- http://ldbcouncil.org Linked DB Benchmark Council
- https://graphblas.github.io GraphBLAS
- https://szarnyasg.github.io/posts/graph-query-languages/ Gabor's post on graph query languages
- https://raphtory.github.io Raphtory, a temporal graph tool developed by Ben and others

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SeptembRSE: How to become a cloud ninja27 Sep 202100:31:37

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, likening the role of RSEs to the 'Colossus of Rhodes'. 

 

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SeptemberRSE special: Closing the skills gap23 Sep 202100:33:21

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 scientists and facilitating roles that keep up with the technological landscape.

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SeptembRSE special: Oracle and Research20 Sep 202100:32:13

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 Derbenwick Miller and Kevin Jorissen. Alison, Kevin and Richard are at Oracle for Research and they talk us through the work they do and how this links to research software engineering.






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Reproduced in Germany06 Sep 202100:29:35

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 them on Twitter
https://twitter.com/germanrepro

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From Research To Startup19 Jul 202100:37:23

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 this episode I'll be talking to a team of researchers, Ben, Haaroon and Alhamza about why they created a startup and the challenges they face. For the second part, we'll be hearing from Riam Kanso - CEO of ConceptionX. ConceptionX is a programme designed to aid researchers turn into venture scientists.

Finally:
It's the beginning of summer here in the Northern Hemisphere and I'll be taking a break. Season 2 of Code for Thought will start again on 6 September.

Links

- https://conceptionx.org 

- https://raphtory.github.io

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Research On The Go05 Jul 202100:30:04

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 familiar to engineers developing mobile apps: native iOS, Android development or cross platform solutions such as React Native or Xamarin.

- The RSE Team at Uni. Manchester, UK https://www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/research/

-  The RSE Team at Uni. Newcastle, UK https://rse.ncldata.dev   

- SORSE events 2020/2021 https://sorse.github.io  

- Developing mobile apps with Xamarin https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/xamarin  

- Developing mobile apps with ReactNative https://reactnative.dev  

And of course native Android and iOS development:
- Android https://developer.android.com  
- iOS https://developer.apple.com  


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Designed to Work: Part 3 - solutions architects21 Jun 202100:28:17

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 gradually after years in software engineering. 

Architecture can be an attractive  choice for engineers who want to develop their career but don't want to leave the technical field. However, as you move into the role of architect you will need to develop more than technical skills, be that business acumen or stakeholder management. 

Research software engineering is a relatively young discipline. But it is rapidly expanding and I think there is an opportunity for us to learn from our colleagues in the private sector: whether it is for developing career paths or software solutions for complex engineering tasks.

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[EN] Planning your research software - a workshop in Paris29 Jul 202400:40:57

In May 2024, I attended a workshop/training course on Software Management Plans (SMP), held at the University Gustave Eiffel east of Paris, France.
In this episode I talk to the organisers and participants about why SMPs might be useful and under what circumstances. 

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Designed to Work: Part 2 - architecture at large scale07 Jun 202100:30:41

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 - who have been working as enterprise architects for some time. And we touch on the challenges of the role and how they deal with it.

Links you may want to follow up on:

- Lean Software Architecture http://www.leansoftwarearchitecture.com

- Melvin Conway's paper: "How do committees invent?" http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html

- Conway's Law: http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html


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Designed to Work: Part 1 - architecture and research24 May 202100:30:47

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 engineering.

Links:
- Digital Lab, King's College London https://kdl.kcl.ac.uk     

- Software Sustainability Institute https://www.software.ac.uk 

- Martin Fowler's take on architecture https://martinfowler.com/architecture/

- Is architecture overrated? https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-architecture-is-overrated/ 


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Where goest thou, Julia - Part 210 May 202100:32:59

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
-  https://github.com/jarvist/PolaronMobility.jl   

Differentiation with Julia
- https://github.com/JuliaDiff   
- https://discourse.julialang.org/t/state-of-automatic-differentiation-in-julia/43083

Lyndon's project: NamedDims
- https://github.com/invenia/NamedDims.jl 

Named Tensor post (mentioned in episode) by Alexander Rush http://nlp.seas.harvard.edu/NamedTensor 

Other links you might find interesting

Composing code with Julia
https://www.oxinabox.net/2020/02/09/whycompositionaljulia.html

Multiple Dispatch comparison
https://medium.com/swlh/how-julia-uses-multiple-dispatch-to-beat-python-8fab888bb4d8

Flux Julia package
https://fluxml.ai/Flux.jl/stable/

Linear Algebra/Julia
https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/stdlib/LinearAlgebra/

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