Computer Science

Obviously, you'll be programming as a computer scientist. This page lists some resources for learning a few of the programming languages that may be covered in your computer science work. I would recommend also learning how to version control your code as a core skill to maintain the integrity of your code.

One key skill to cultivate is to learn how to learn new programming languages. Do you learn best through taking on a project and learning as you go from a tutorial? Or do you prefer to read about the languages, then try through an open course? Or, do you follow YouTube videos? However you learn technology, that is a skill you'll definitely want to refine as you move through your computer science career. The technology will always change on you, and you need to know how to change with it.

For general definitios of keywords, A Beginner’s Glossary of Coding and Programming Terms is a good resource.

You should take care to follow the best practices in writing scripts, do-files, and documentation for the many steps of your workflows, be they testing some network functionalities or doing data analysis. This is a part of good internal research data management for individuals and collaborators, but it is also becoming increasingly vital (even mandatory) to meet the demand for reproducibility of research.

Do:

• Comment your script frequently
• Load dependencies (libraries, input data) at the beginning of a script
• Follow style conventions appropriate for the language being used

Do not:

• Embed ##comments## within a line of code
• Undermine readability by not using indentation, bracketing, and other stylistic conventions
• Leave code that doesn't actually do anything anymore in your script