Programming Expectations

General rule for our system: As much boilerplate as possible, no fancy bashrcs, aliases or IDEs.

• Browser
• WiFi access (should come from base OS)
• User account (!)
• Python 2.7.x (incl. offline documentation)
  • IPython
  • NumPy
  • Matplotlib
  • SciPy
  • ASE
  • pip
• MicroMegas
• OOFEM
• Text Editor (Sublime Text? - they should at least be able to use the mouse, syntax highlighting)
• htop
• paraview
• jade (DEM) (?)
• should use as few resources as conveniently possible
• users should be able to install software when they know how to do it
• fipy

Should be tested on the WW8 CIP pool computers, the WW8 laptops, one OS X machine, one Windows Machine, WW CIP pool, electronical engineering CIP pool

Provide a test suite for the tutors/admins to see if everything is working correctly.

• google
• working with documentations (especially Python)
• with regards to plotting: should the student be in the situation when he has to plot a function with a singularity he should be able to recognize this and adjust the limits accordingly to sensible values. Prime examples: Lennard-Jones-Potential, stress field of a dislocation, etc. etc.
• know the relevance of backups
• using htop
• killing stuck programs (while loops are lame)
• knowing the limitations of the computer (memory, cpu speed)
• extracting the algorithm from a mathematical formula

• navigation in the directory tree
• copying files
• moving files
• deleting files
• opening a text editor
• working with the text editor

• functions
• modules
• learn how to read exceptions (→ debugging)
• debugging
• common “pitfalls” (float numbers, numbering starts at 0)
• execution of script in the shell (chmod, shebang, starting from ipython console)
• proper directory structure for “projects” (doc, tests, bin, output)

• printing
• text formatting
• reading a file
• parsing a file
  • as a whole
  • line by line
• writing to a file
• boolean logic
• binary operators
• conditionals
  • if
  • elif
  • else
• data containers
  • tuple + slicing
  • list + slicing
    • append
  • dict
• loops
  • while loop
  • for loop (with else, introduce iterators before!)
  • breaking out of a loop
  • loop-recursing (is that really a loop inside a loop?!)
• range

• NumPy array
  • initializing
    • zeros + shape
    • ones + shape
    • full + shape
    • zeros_like
    • ones_like
    • full_like
  • shape
  • slicing
  • reading from file
  • writing to file
• they should know that the default binary operators act element-wise
• arange
• linspace
• stacking arrays
• meshgrid
• linear algebra
  • dot product
  • cross product
  • determinant
  • solving systems of equations

• plot types
  • line plot
  • scatter plot
  • pcolormesh
  • contour plot
• working with figures
• working with axes
• plotting interactively
  • plot.hold
  • plot.ion → ax.set_ydata → plot.ioff
• saving the figure in a file
• closing figures
• adding a title
• adding labels
• setting linestyle (color, marker, linetype)
• setting limits
• subfigures
• changing the colorscale
• changing the colormap