Reading Other People's Code

“I would love to read your code!”, said no one ever. Seasoned programmers will tell you they would rather be poked with sharp pointy sticks than read someone else’s code. So where does that leave non- or new programmers? More and more these days non-programmers (i.e., people from diverse non-coding backgrounds) are required to use and understand someone else’s code. In this workshop, we explore ways to reduce the frustration of trying to figure out things like "what in the world is happening on line 32 of this thing?!" We will cover high-level concepts that will help you more easily identify what code is doing. By the end of this workshop, you will be able to read other’s code with confidence or at least not get immediately frustrated when the need arises. While this workshop is not language specific, examples will be provided in R, Python and MATLAB. Topics covered include understanding data and storage types, function types (user-defined vs. system or libraries), the basics of object-oriented code and how to distinguish between it and procedural code. We will identify examples of good coding style, particularly practices that make reading code easier. We will also discuss steps to make getting help easier.

Biography: Selene Schmittling is a PhD student in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at NCSU. She researches computational techniques, including machine learning, to identify molecular regulatory relationships that exist in plants under stress. She has used GitHub in R, MATLAB®, Python (through PyCharm) and with LaTex documents to collaborate on homework. She is also Curriculum Director for Engineering Opportunity, a non-profit group whose mission is to promote equity in education and provide accessible educational enrichment experiences.