What Else for Software Carpentry?

16 lectures are now in place (more or less), which means I have 8 more to do. The syllabus shows what I've covered already; my current plans include:

• unit testing
• XML
• SQL
• more SQL
• small-team development process

What do you think the other three should cover (keeping in mind that this is supposed to be a course on basic software engineering, rather than scientific programming)? Options include:

1. Basic web programming, with much-revised versions of:
   • http://www.third-bit.com/swc1/www/client.html
   • http://www.third-bit.com/swc1/www/server.html
   • http://www.third-bit.com/swc1/www/security.html
2. Integration, including:
   • wrapping C code so that it can be called from Python
   • using popen() and its ilk to run external programs
   • (probably) something on refactoring to make code more testable (as per Feathers' excellent Working Effectively with Legacy Code
3. Three lecture-length examples, building very simple versions of core tools that haven't been covered elsewhere:
   • data lineage
   • continuous integration
   • data consistency checking
4. Give in, and do the scientific programming stuff anyway:
   • floating-point arithmetic
   • Python's Numeric package
   • data visualization
5. Scrap the single lecture on development process, and put in four full lectures on the subject
   • XP
   • UML-based processes (probably ICONIX)
   • something else (not entirely sure what)
6. Something else entirely — suggestions would be very welcome.

Please let me know what you think.

Originally posted 2006-02-21 by Greg Wilson in Content.

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