Coding and Technical Software

At one level you'd think after all my years of teaching that I'd be pretty close to knowing what I'm doing but you would be wrong about that. There are several reasons for this (possibly) unfortunate situation but one relevant one is that the world is hardly standing still around us and the skills I need to help you learn these days are certainly different than they were just 10 years ago. In particular there is a real need for me to at least get you started on coding and technical documentation skills that are pretty standard out there in the world.

Because I have a daughter who is working in the tech world I have been able to track the evolution of what her employers (who are also your employers) are expecting for basic skills. Recently it has evolved again. Fortunately, this time, it has evolved in the direction of open source tools and processes. While not universal, Python is becoming a standard programming language in many STEM fields and mark up languages like LaTeX are a standard expectation for producing written technical documents that embed math, graphics, and plots effectively. Jupyter Lab is an application that does many things including supporting python notebooks combine all of these features in a way which is effective for many kinds of STEM and data work. There are endless arguments about why it is not the best purely coding environment but we will not get to a place where that matters in this class.

If you want to get a jump on the class you can start by installing Anaconda Navigator on your personal computer. Start on the installation link under Anaconda/Jupyter at the top right. This is going to be fun and challenging.....