Working Group Tools, Tips and Tricks

Formerly known as: The Python Workshop.

Presentation

Topic: Tools, tips and tricks for researchers in mathematics and computer science.

Audience: The group “Tools, Tips and Tricks” is intended for researchers in mathematics and computer science, but anyone can attend online.

Practical details: The sessions are held every third Wednesday from 10:30 am to 11:30 pm (Central European Summer Time), in the premises of the Lincs and online. To receive the invitations, register to the mailing list. Videos, slides and notebooks of previous sessions are on the website.

Coordinator: François Durand (fradurand@gmail.com).

Description

Historically, this working group was dedicated to sharing knowledge about the Python language. Nowadays, while we keep an important focus on Python, we also discuss other tools and practices: other programming languages, operating systems, software, etc. In the future, we could also touch non-computer topics, such as research methodology, efficient bibliography, etc.

Past sessions

In the past sessions, due to the exclusively-Python-oriented aspect of the group, we covered a lot of topics in Python, such as:

• Python basics:
  • introduction to Python (1, 2, 3),
  • Python 101,
  • developping with style,
  • collections,
  • dictionaries, iterators.
• Design patterns:
  • architectural considerations (1, 2),
  • abstract classes,
  • clean code,
  • building a research-oriented system,
  • object-oriented programming, SOLID principles.
• Scientific packages:
  • pandas,
  • seaborn,
  • tikzplotlib,
  • pytorch,
  • vis.js network,
  • huggingface (1, 2),
  • Gym and Stable Baselines,
  • CVXPY,
  • Petting Zoo,
  • Tree-sitter,
  • Scyther.
• Other packages:
  • numba,
  • cherrypy,
  • joblib,
  • scrapy,
  • pathlib,
  • gzip,
  • zipfile,
  • tempfile,
  • requests,
  • beautifulsoup,
  • selenium,
  • pygame,
  • simpy,
  • sockets (1, 2)
  • fastcore,
  • asyncio (1, 2),
  • threads,
  • manim,
  • IPyWidgets,
  • Solara and AnyWidget.
• Development environment:
  • jupyter notebook (1, 2),
  • pycharm,
  • conda,
  • profiling.
• Production tools:
  • packaging (1, 2, 3),
  • documentation,
  • testing (1, 2),
  • git,
  • codecov,
  • cloud solutions,
  • pyinstaller, containers.

But we also covered other topics, such as:

• LaTeX: Tikz, Beamer.
• Unix / Linux: APT, GNU Parallel.
• JavaScript: introduction to JavaScript (1, 2), D3.js.
• C.
• Sagemath.
• Obsidian and Zotero.

Contributing

As a speaker:

• Do not hesitate to start from an online tutorial or documentation and to prepare a digest of it.
• You can prepare a lecture, a practical work session, or a mix of the two.
• Please try to provide code files if relevant.

Sessions