Hacking for Science

Block 1, Session 2: The Big Picture

Matt Bannert (@whatsgoodio)

How to Compose the Right Toolbox?

Book Chapter: Stack - A Developer’s Toolkit

Editors and IDEs

People: “Oh, you’re such a wizard.” Me: “No, just a carpenter.”

IDEs: VS Code, R Studio, pyCharm Text Editors: Atom, Sublime, Notepad++, Text Wrangler

Programming Languages:
Compiled vs. Interpreted

Version Control

Git is NOT GitHub

Git is NOT GitHub

Git is NOT GitHub

Git is NOT GitHub

Git is NOT GitHub

Version Control Systems

• git
• SVN
• CVS
• mercurial

Git Platforms (git + web GUI + PM tools)

• GitHub
• GitLab
• Bitbucket

gitea is a self-hosted service (run a platform on your own server).

Data Management

Relational Database
Management Systems (RDBMS)

• Oracle
• Microsoft SQL Server
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL
• SQLite
• …

Non-Relational Databases

• MongoDB
• Redis
• Redshift
• …

Infrastructure:
On Premise, SaaS, Cloud

Automation

Process Automation

• Cronjobs
• Apache Airflow

Release Automation

• Gitlab CI
• GitHub Actions
• Drone

Infrastructure Automation

• Terraform
• Ansible
• Helm

Communication, Community & Resources

• community groups: RLadies, WhyR, MiR, Forwards, AfricaR, the carpentries, local R user groups
• mailing lists
• Slack (RSE, Zurich R User Group), Discord, matrix
• Documentation, Content Aggregators, e.g., CTV, Python Graph Gallery
• big book of R
• Stackoverflow.com

Publishing

“Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”

– Donald Knuth