Feedback from UC Berkeley
This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
We just finished up our UC Berkeley bootcamp with me, Katy Huff, and Justin Kitzes teaching. Here's the feedback:
| Good | Bad |
|---|---|
| first day good with no programming experience | couldn't run the VM on underpowered computer |
| good general intro to basics of Python and VC | don't see why Python is better than R |
| liked the intro/advanced Python split | would like a longer bootcamp with more focus on Python |
| good git introduction | didn't want to learn Python |
| IPython notebook helped me learn | would like to give anonymous feedback |
| got to see real software engineering | didn't catch some important details that held things up |
| good coverage of Python + software engineering | have better setup instructions, test scripts |
| wanted to learn Python | Python instruction was too slow/basic |
| liked simple examples | got left behind sometimes |
| IPython/shell interaction awesome | not sure how to integrate git into workflow, have practical demos, case studies |
| good job squeezing a lot of content in | hard to type/listen/watch all at once |
| introduced scientific Python | would be nice to have a data cleaning example, workflow example |
| liked the showcase demos of matplotlib/IPython features | could have sped up introductory topics |
| combination of topics was good | have more content summaries, workflow visualizations |
| liked intro Python exercises | reading suggestions to follow up bootcamp |
| understand the basics of version control | wanted to see object oriented programming/calling C code |
Unfortunately I missed a pre-workshop memo that most of the attendees would be experienced R users and I could have sped up/skipped some of the introductory programming material in favor of more scientific Python. The second day material on version control and software engineering still seemed to hit home, though, so we didn't totally waste their time. In future workshops I'll try to do a better job getting attendee profiles beforehand.
One piece of feedback I was particularly gratified to hear was someone saying that they thought the IPython Notebook was a good pedagogical tool for exactly the reasons Ethan White and I outlined in a previous post. The student enjoyed focusing simply on the language without the distractions of switching between editors and shells.