Reproducible Software with Python¶

Intended Audience¶

This course is designed for participants with Python programming experience who would like to improve their development process. Participants learn how to applies solid engineering techniques to their daily programming tasks.. It is highly recommended to attend our course Python for Programmers before this course or have equivalent Python knowledge to take full advantage of this course.

Motivation¶

Many Python user such as scientists and engineers who program and create software aren’t formally educated in software engineering. Therefore, the resulting software is often not up to established standards. This can especially effect reproducibility. This is a rather common scenario: The program work yesterday but today the results look different. It is not clear what caused the change. In addition, it is difficult to find the last working version. Knowledge and application of basic software engineering techniques can help to make software better reproducible.

Content¶

The course offers a practical overview of basic software engineering techniques. These are the topics:

• Creating environments and installing packages with conda and friends

• Basics of version control with git

• Testing basics with pytest

• Documentation with sphinx

• Creating and deploying Python packages

• Example project

Exercises¶

The participants can follow all steps directly on their computers. There are exercises at the end of each unit providing ample opportunity to apply the freshly learned knowledge.

Course Material¶

Every participant receives comprehensive materials in PDF format that cover the whole course content as well as all source code.

Recommended Module Combinations¶

You should have intermediate Python experience or attend the course Python for Programmers before.