Turning Particle-Astro-Physicist-Hackers into Software Engineers
summary
Describes a year of concrete programs: week-long boot camps, monthly code sprints and a strike team that train grad students and postdocs to convert a 1M‑line C++ codebase (70% C++) with one full‑time maintainer into maintainable software. Shows metrics: eliminated “abandoned” production modules on paper, increased commit activity from trainees, added tests and docs, taught GDB, CMake, templates, and a final project to reimplement the plugin framework; also uses Slack and GPUs for photon propagation and plans a virtual course starting in January.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction to Ice Cube
- 4:49Scientific mission and scope
- 10:05Detector design and scale
- 14:11Data collection and analysis
- 17:46Managing scientific software
- 23:19Assessing maintenance burden
- 26:56Bridging the skills gap
- 34:22The case for education
- 40:04Boot camps and development
- 46:55Effective training strategies
- 51:56Adopting best practices
- 57:12Conclusion and takeaways
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