ISMIR2018/OpenSource and reproducible MIR Research

ORMR was the topic of Sunday’s tutorial . There Brian McFee and Thor Kell went through good coding basics, git, python, CI, tests and flake8 in order to show participants how to make code, which yourself can read after summer holidays, but which would be something that others can pick up.

Tutorial 23.9. 9-12.30

There was quite similar tenet as in the earlier WORMS workshop from the researcher point of view. Utilize version control , document stuff, and explain things. As an avid user of many github repositories and tools shared there both of these talks were important to have – at least if you can influence the newcomers coming to the field, then the future will be brighter or at least more open.  Even if some of the materials would be familiar, do peek it at : http://bit.ly/ossmir  , the material was nicely structured and the pace was nice for the most of the participants. For fast-goers, the teachers reminded of option to go through materials beforehand, so there was something to do while waiting for others. As a handy practical thing, the organizers controlled time spent via two sticky notes: blue : if the checkpoint was completed, and red if there was some issues or questions. With two teachers it worked quite well. Only nag was that they didn’t mention the laptop requirement beforehand, so couple of people got also the pair programming experiment.

But as in one after discussion was told to me – do not just pick up a python module from internet, but do read the code and attempt to understand how it works. In the long run it will pay up as then when the hard times come ahead you have options to tweak system further to the desired direction.