Topics

We want to learn the ways that physicists and astronomer use computers for research. Our goal is to cover:

• Unix and the Unix shell

  This differs from the Windows or Mac OS that you might be most familiar with, but allows for powerful file manipulation and use of remote computing resources.

• Editors

  These are tools that allow us to write computer programs as plain text, and often have features that ease code development.

• C++ programming

  C++ is a popular language for scientific computing. We will learn how to use it to store and manipulate data and do complex calculations. This includes learning about:

  • Datatypes

  • the Standard Library and containers

  • Functions and Classes

• Software engineering concepts

  There are a variety of tools that make our life easier as a programmer. We will learn about:

  • Version control with git

  • Testing

  • Build systems

• Some other useful skills

  • Creating webpages

  • LaTeX

  • Plotting