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20240426

Retrospective Day 5

Teachers are learners too. Please help us improve by sharing your opinion. Ideally, it is something fixable, e.g. 'My camera did not work' is something we cannot fix, but 'I had no way to interact (as my camera did not work) and the Zoom chat was not listened to' is.

Continue: What went well?

  • Mixing teachers and topics during the last day. At least I feel that my brain is a bit soaked in information so it was nice to have this last day with different topiscs so you could stay alert.
  • Everything went well

Improve: Which section(s) scheduled enough time for exercises?

  • I think we had enough time to at least get the concept of each exercise even if we could do more.
  • I think we had enough time.

Question: should a GitHub course be a prerequisite?

In the course we spend a lot of time on GitHub as we use/need it. However, there are plenty of GitHub courses (e.g. NBIS has one). Should having followed a GitHub course be a prerequisite?

  • Yes, but then reduce the load of GitHub exercises
  • Maybe its a good idea to at least write in the pre-req that github will be used a lot.
  • Yes, at least the basic stuff (how to create an issue, create a branch, etc.).
  • Probably, but it might be a reducing factor for applicants. I can only take one course per year. So having another course as a pre-requisite would probably make it a bit hard for me to attend.

Stop: What held us back?

  • For me it was too many new tools and I didn´t have enough time during the exercises to switch between mermaid and github ..

Invent: What can we improve?

[nothing]

Course evaluation

&TLDR: write something about the course

The course motto is 'turning scripters into computer scientists', by 'adding theory to bolster already present practical skills'. The purpose of the shared project is to give a realistic/complex environment where the theoretical concepts can be experienced (e.g. branching, code reviews).

  • How can we better achieve those goals?
    • The course was very good overall and gave a good perspective on software design, but I missed some other application outside developing a package, such as how to apply those software development techniques to developing analysis workflows. For example, should we use TDD for workflows? or are classes also useful in workflow contexts?
  • Where did we do a good job and where could we do better?
    • The course structure was very good. We can do better for exercises.
    • It was a very good course with very clear documentation. The exercises were also very good eventhough there was not always enough time.
    • I think it could be more clearly stated in the beginning of the course that we were not supposed to actually build a complete software. The first days I got really stressed when I didn't finished the exercises and when I couldn't handle all the new tools. After a couple of days I figured out that that was not purpose. Then I could relax a bit and focus more on learning instead of stressing about the practical parts.
  • What would you keep and what would you change?
    • Love all the practical exercises, but the GitHub was a bit too much. Would have focuses on the software design exercise more.
    • I enjoyed all the git-hubbing but I have some experience from before so it mostly gave me the tools to develop my already exixstig skills.
  • If you want to do more of something, what should be done less of?
    • Modularity and data structure, less practice about git issue
    • More testing, less flowcharts.

Write something about the course 1

I enjoyed the course. Now I have more background to able to code a program for others who can use. I love the pair programming. This is more interecting than I think. Thank you very much!

Write something about the course 2

The course was very good. Really nice material and easy to follow. There has been a lot of information to digest but I think it will be easy to later go to the website and read through again all the excellent material. The pair programming was really fun and very instructive, I really enjoyed it. I think everything went fine during the course but sometime we didn't have enought time to complete the exercises, it felt a bit rushed. In terms of content, I missed more practical exercises on how to optimise the code. But as a summary a really nice course :)