Software Summer School Lessons: Glossary

conda is a package manager that can be used to create environments and install packages.

Numeric data types include integers (int), floating point numbers (float), and complex numbers.

Text is represented as a string (str)

You can use lists, tuples, or dicitionaries to group data together

Tuples and lists are similar, but tuples cannot be modified after they are created.

Python dictonaries use key-value pairs to group data together

NumPy arrays which are the same size use element-wise operations when added or subtracted

NumPy uses something called broadcasting for arrays which are not the same size to allow arrays to be added or multiplied.

NumPy has several functions to create arrays such as linspace (linearly spaced array) and zeros (create an array of 0’s)

Git provides a way to track changes and differences between versions.

git can be used with an online repository (GitHub) so that you can access a copy of your code from any machine

To contribute to someone else’s project, you should fork their repository.

All development work should be done on a new branch. Each branch should implement one feature.

Once you’ve implemented a new feature, push to your repository and create a pull request on the original repo.

There is a common way to structure Python packages

You can use the CMS CookieCutter to quickly create the layout for a Python package

Your code should adhere to standards outlined in PEP8 so that it easily readable by others.

All functions and modules should be documented with docstrings.

Enumerate the types of testing and the importance of each.

Explain pytest features and why pytest was selected.

Continuous integration services can be used to automatically test your code.

Some documentation is better than no documentation