Week 1: Getting Started with Software Development Tools

Goals

• Understand course goals, organization and expectations

• Recognize opportunities to improve productivity through software development practices

• Exercise 1: Use software development tools

  • Access Lynx Portal's Pluto and/or Jupyter Lab Server

  • Optionally setup Julia+Pluto+git on your own computer

  • Use Git & GitHub.com for retrieving and submitting lab assignments

  • Use variables, strings and Markdown in Julia

  • Use unit tests

• Exercise 2: Floating Point Arithmetic, Functions

  • Write code as a function

  • Use/write tests of code

  • Recognize potential pitfalls with floating-point arithmetic

• Exercise 3: Develop your personal goals for semester

Lessons along the way

• Types: Strings, Floating point types

• Functions, Docstrings

• Modules, Packages, Namespace

• using/import, include

• Pseudo-random numbers

• Broadcasting

• Type stability

• Online algorithms

• Writing markdown text

Readings

• Prior to Friday's class

  • Log in to the Lynx cluster to verify your account is set up

  • Read Github tutorial (at least through “Fork a Repo”,)

• This week

  • Think Julia Ch 1: The Way of the Program

  • The Rationale for Julia: Getting Started with Julia Programming (6pgs avaliable via "First Pages" as Preview/"Look Inside!")

  • Writing Scientific Software Ch 2 (22pgs): Scientific Computation and numerical analysis

  • If it will help you with the lab: Think Julia Ch 2: Variables, Expressions & Statements

Lab

Lab 1: Tools & Fundamentals: Floating Point Arithmetic, Functions, Tests (Due Sept 3)

• Exercise 1: Get started using core development tools

• Exercise 2: Floating Point Arithmetic, Functions, Tests

• Exercise 3: Personal Goals (save at least 15 minutes for this one)

Additional Resources

• Course overview

• Week 1 Class Discussion (notebook)

Instructions for using Lynx Cluster

• Create Account on Lynx

• Initial Setup on Lynx

• Pluto Notebooks on Lynx

• Starting & Submitting Assignments

Install Julia & Pluto on your local machine (optional)

• See instructions from MIT Intro to Computational Thinking course (For your lab assignments, you'll use Step 2b: Open an existing notebook file, rather than Step 1a Open a notebook from the web.)