Software Carpentry (Shell, Git, Programming with R)

16 Mar 2026, 09:00 → 20 Mar 2026, 13:01 Africa/Johannesburg

Online (Online)

Learn basic computing skills for your research

Software & Data Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain. This hands-on online workshop covers basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and apply their learnings to their own research problems. 

 

Who should attend? Graduate students and other researchers. You don't need any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop. Venue Training takes place online. The instructors will send you the information you need to connect to this workshop. Requirements  You will need access to a computer with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) on which you have administrative privileges. You will also need an up-to-date browser and a few specific software packages installed.       Questions? If you have a query, please email thuthukile.khumalo@nithecs.ac.za

This training is hosted by NITheCS and presented by The Carpentries

Poster

Monday 16 March

1 Intro: Download files and Install software

2 Introducing the Shell and Navigating Files & Directories

3 Working With Files and Directories

09:50 Short break

4 Pipes & Filters

10:30 Break

5 Loops, Shell Scripts and Finding Things

13:00 End of day

Tuesday 17 March

6 Intro: Installing Github, Creating Git account and preparing working directory

7 Automated Version Control & Setting Up Git

09:50 Short Break

8 Creating a Repository & Tracking changes

10:30 Break

9 Exploring History &Remotes in GitHub

10 Collaborating, Conflicts & Open Science

11 Licensing, Citation & Hosting

12 Supplemental: Using Git from RStudio

13:00 End of day

Wednesday 18 March

13 Analyzing Patient Data

14 Creating functions

09:50 Short Break

15 Analyzing Multiple Data Sets

10:30 Break

16 Making choices

17 Command Line Programs

18 Q&A

13:00 End of Day

Thursday 19 March

19 Best Practices for Writing R Code

20 Dynamic Reports with knitr

09:50 Short Break

21 Making Packages in R

10:30 Break

22 Introduction to RStudio

23 Addressing Data

13:00 End of day

Friday 20 March

24 Reading and Writing CSV files

25 Understanding Factors

09:50 Short Break

26 Data Types and Structures

10:30 Break

27 Data Types and Structures II

28 The Call Stack

29 Loops in R

30 Summary and Q&A

13:00 End of Workshop