Category Archives: people

Software in Astronomy Symposium Presentations (2018 EWASS/NAM)

This is the first in a series of posts on the six-session Software in Astronomy Symposium held on Wednesday and Thursday, April 3-4 at the 2018 EWASS/NAM meeting. Each of the six sessions focused on a different aspect of research software, covering not only specific software packages, but also computational techniques used in data mining and machine learning, open services, software development training and techniques, and getting credit and citations for computational methods. Several sessions included a free-form period in which participants could ask questions, discuss issues, and share information. The last session of the Symposium was a lively moderated discussion among attendees with particular interest in software publishing.

BLOCK 1: Software engineering and sustainability, education for better software, & the ecosystem around Python in astronomy
The first session set the stage for the Symposium, featuring a variety of topics of importance when discussing astronomy research software. Alice Allen (ASCL, US) moderated the session. In the inaugural talk, Software Engineers as Partners in Astronomy Software Development, John Wenskovitch (Virginia Tech, US) opened his presentation with a quote by computer scientist and professor Carole Goble, stating that software is “the most prevalent of all the instruments used in modern science.” This was reiterated by others throughout the symposium. Wenskovitch provided statistics on software use and development activities by academics, among these that 92% of academics use software and 38% spend at least 20% of their time developing software. Research software engineers (RSE) provide guidance to researchers on software engineering and encourage the use of tools that can save academics time and effort in their development efforts. Wenskovitch suggests identifying and using the strengths of each, with the researcher bringing domain knowledge and expertise on the research itself, and the RSE bringing development experiendocument all the things!ce and software engineering expertise. He provided suggestions for ensuring a fruitful partnership; these include using version control, scheduling time for regular and frequent communication, having a prioritized feature list, testing the code thoroughly using unit, regression, and usability tests, and documenting everything.

photo of Mark WilkinsonMark Wilkinson (DiRAC HPC Facility, UK) spoke next, presenting Research Software Engineering – the DiRAC facility experience. The science requirements for DiRAC demand a 10-40fold increase in computing power to stay competitive, and this increase cannot be delivered solely by hardware. Software vectorization and code efficiency is vital, and RSEs are increasingly important to help with, for example, code profiling, optimization, and porting. DiRAC’s three full-time RSEs are embedded in teams, their time allocated through a peer-review process. Wilkinson showed that the use of RSEs has paid off well for DiRAC, with, for one project, a factor 10 speed-up by optimizing a particular code. The focus on software engineering continued with a talk on Software Engineering Training for Researchers delivered by David Perez-Suarez (UCL, UK). He presented information he had gathered by conducting a quick survey to learn, among other things, what software development training researchers had gotten. His recommendations for training include running or attending training taught by The Carpentries, asking that training be conducted in conjunction with a large conference, such as the  American Astronomical Society has been doing for several years, checking to see what software training might be offered by your university, creating your own study group, and contributing to an open source project. James Nightingale (DurhamU, UK) presented a very interesting talk on Test-driven Development in Astronomy. He convinced many in the room that using this technique for developing software will result in better software and less aggravation when coding. He stressed that test-driven development (TDD) is not a testing process, but a development process, and that the code coming out fully tested is a bonus. With TDD, the first task is not to write code, but to write a unit test and then run it to ensure it fails. Only after that do you write the code, and then test it. Through refactoring and testing code, you get instant feedback on whether the code’s functionality has changed, and code design becomes part of the development cycle.

The session then moved on to software sustainability with Bruce Berriman’s (Caltech/IPAC-NExScI, US) talk on Sustaining The Montage Image Mosaic Engine Since 2002. Montage has become increasingly robust and versatile over the years, is embedded in various archives and processing environments, and has been used in other disciplines as well as in astronomy. It has been cited more in information technology literature than in astronomy literature, though uptake of Montage was initially slow. Berriman made the point that design drives sustainability; all Montage releases inherit the design, and each module performs one task. He advocates listening to users and learning from their experiences, and shared his adage that “the grumpier the user, the more valuable the suggestions.”

The last two talks of this first session focused on Python, and covered the growing use of this language in astronomy, the reasons for this growth, the support that is available for the language, and information on one very popular package written in Python. Amruta Jaodand (ASTRON, NL) presented A Walk Through Python Ecosystem, starting with its early development in 1989 by Guido van Rossum at the University of Amsterdam. The advantages of Python include simplicity and natural flow and an extensive, powerful standard library. Strengths of the language include the development of scientific, numerical, and statistical packages and its Python Package Index (PyPi), which enables module and package sharing. Jaodand shared some of the learning materials available for Python, including python4astronomers, and also a lovely Easter egg about Python that is too long to include here and is worth reading. One of the most important astronomy packages is AstroPy, and Jaodand’s talk was followed by The Astropy Project: A community Python library and ecosystem of astronomy packages, presented by Brigitta Sipocz (AstroPy, UK). AstroPy provides software for many common astronomy needs; in addition to the core library, there are many affiliated packages. All of these packages adhere to coding, testing and documentation standards that have been developed by the AstroPy coding community. Sipocz also discussed the community, with members of the team having one or more of its many roles. The number of collaborators continues to grow, and the community welcomes new members, and labels packages that are particularly friendly for a new contributor to work on.

Slides from this session

Software Engineers as Partners in Astronomy Software Development by John Wenskovitch (PDF)

Research Software Engineering – the DiRAC facility experience by Mark Wilkinson (pdf)

Sustaining The Montage Image Mosaic Engine Since 2002 by Bruce Berriman (pdf)

Software Engineering Training for Researchers by David Perez-Suarez (Google doc) | blog post

Test-driven Development in Astronomy by James Nightingale (pdf)

A Walk Through Python Ecosystem by Amruta Jaodand (pdf)

Perspectives in Research Software Special Session at AAS 229

FRIDAY, 6 JANUARY 2017
Special Session: Perspectives in Research Software: Education, Funding, Reproducibility, Citation, and Impact
10:00 am – 11:30 am
Grapevine 2

The Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment at NYU and the ASCL have organized a Special Session at January’s AAS. The session, Perspectives in Research Software: Education, Funding, Reproducibility, Citation, and Impact, will be moderated by Bruce Berriman (IPAC, Caltech/Astronomy Computing Today). The session will feature short presentations and will include a discussion period with the floor open for questions and comments, and maybe even a few answers, too. The topics and presenters are :

Tracy Teal (Data Carpentry), Software not as a service
Michael Hucka (Caltech), Finding the right wheel when you don’t want to reinvent it
Lior Shamir (LTU), Reproducibility and reusability of scientific software
Ivelina Momcheva (STScI), Funding research software development
Heather Piwowar (ImpactStory), Capturing the impact of software
David W. Hogg (NYU), The relationships between software publications and software systems
Alice Allen (ASCL), Update on research software citation efforts

That last speaker looks a wee bit dodgy, but the moderator and other panelists are aces! And you, software authors and users, are as always important participants in the discussion. I hope to see you there!

ASCL Advisory Committee changes

Earlier this month, Robert Hanisch stepped down as an adviser on the ASCL’s Advisory Committee (AC); we are grateful for his service to the ASCL and thank him for his assistance.

Thomas Robitaille from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has joined the AC. He brings with him a wealth of experience as a software author, having developed Hyperion and APLpy; he’s also work on Glue and AstroPy and other astronomy software. We are delighted to have his input!

ADASS opens this evening with a welcome reception

The 24th Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) meeting starts this evening at the Westin Hotel in Calgary, Canada. Talks start tomorrow afternoon; the opening sessions are focused on Big Data Challenges, which is such a big topic it has to be continued on Monday morning.

Though the ASCL editors are not attending ADASS this year, most of the Advisory Committee is (Peter Teuben, Bruce Berriman, Bob Hanisch, Jessica Mink, Keith Shortridge, and Mark Taylor) and Bob Hanisch has a poster on the ASCL’s recent changes to hang.

You can follow ADASS on Twitter , and tomorrow, we’ll post the ASCL poster here.

ADASS XXIII Poster

When Alice asked me if I’d like to present a poster at this year’s ADASS I jumped at the chance: After all, it was Alice’s poster and presentation at ADASS XXI that prompted me to volunteer for ASCL. Also, I don’t often get the opportunity to exercise my creative side, and what better way to give it a workout than to create a poster that will be seen by millions (ok, hundreds) of people. However once I started working on the poster I realized that my creative side had atrophied a bit due to disuse. With Alice’s coaching (“You know you can use more than one color!”) I managed to pull together a poster that I hope you find informative and eye-catching without being too wordy. If I’m really lucky I might even be able to snare another ASCL volunteer.

ADASS2013Poster1

ASCL at ADASS

The ASCL is participating in ADASS in the following ways:

Not going to ADASS but want to participate in the BoF session? We’d love to have your input and ideas. We’ll be running a Twitter feed running throughout the BoF  (follow @asclnet). What else might work for you?

Astrophysics Code Sharing II: The Sequel at the January 2014 AAS meeting

The ASCL, along with the AAS’s Working Group on Astronomical Software (WGAS), is coordinating a Special Session at the January 2014 AAS meeting. This session is scheduled for 2:00 PM on January 7, and will feature case studies on code release for AstroPy, Montage, and Cloudy in addition to talks on the state of code sharing and funding agencies’ policies.

The session will be moderated by Peter Teuben and Robert Hanisch; the speakers for this session are:

G. Bruce Berriman, NExScI, PAC, Caltech
Gary J. Ferland, University of Kentucky
David W. Hogg, New York University
Daniel S. Katz, National Science Foundation
Erik J. Tollerud, Yale University
Benjamin J. Weiner, University of Arizona

After the presentations, the floor will be opened for discussion on ways to encourage code sharing to improve the transparency and efficiency of research and mitigate the negative aspects of releasing code.

 

Finding codes and Russian nesting dolls

As those familiar with the ASCL know, those working on it take an active approach to sharing astrophysical source code, ferreting out codes, looking for their download sites, and creating entries for them in the ASCL. We welcome and indeed (enthusiastically!) encourage code authors to create entries for their codes, but most of the indexing of codes is currently done by ASCL associate editor Kim DuPrie and me.

I regularly read through pre-prints looking for mention of codes not yet indexed by the ASCL; Advisory Committee Chairman Peter Teuben does the same. He has access to publications I cannot get to, such as MNRAS, and looks there for codes as well. A paper may yield a code new to the ASCL, and sometimes, a paper will reveal what Peter and I refer to as Russian dolls: the deeper we get into a paper, the more codes it reveals. One paper he sent to me recently revealed 37 (!) codes, only 5 of which the ASCL had indexed. Thirty-two new codes to try to find!

Other times, a paper will mention two or three or more codes which lead us to other papers which mention yet more codes, which lead us to papers which mention even more codes… and though the ASCL indexes over 600 codes, there are still hundreds, probably thousands, out there it hasn’t indexed, so some of these more more MORE codes that we come across also need to be found. Like Russian nesting dolls, the codes go on and on and on.

It’s times like that — finding 32 new codes in just one paper! peeling back layers and layers of new codes! — I wish I could work on the ASCL full-time. Well, also the times I look at the list we’d already compiled (a list I stopped adding to over a year ago) of ~ 200 codes to find. Also the times I look at the list of things still to be done for/on/about the ASCL beyond indexing new codes.

So many codes, so little time to spend on them, alas!

Two new members join the Advisory Committee

Keith Shortridge at the Australian Astronomical Observatory and Mark Taylor at the University of Bristol (UK) have graciously agreed to serve on the ASCL’s Advisory Committee.

Dr. Shortridge has written data reduction and data acquisition software throughout his career. He has an increasing interest in the way software is developed and in communication in the astronomical software field, and is associated with the AstroShare project. He wrote the Figaro data reduction system for Palomar early in his career, and his software AAOGlimpse was presented at the XXI ADASS conference.

Dr. Taylor has been writing astronomical software since 1998. His work has focused on processing catalogs of astronomical objects (galaxies and stars), particularly in the context of the emerging Virtual Observatory. He has worked on Starlink, AstroGrid, Euro-VOTech and the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, and is the author of several widely-used tools, including the interactive graphical viewer and tabular data editor TOPCAT.