Helpful Resources

Many of these resources go beyond the scope of this workshop, but all are incredibly useful for your future endeavors in biocomputing!

• The Unix Tutorial for Beginners is a great resource and starting point for getting comfortable with the command-line environment.
• This super weird Unix intro PDF is probably excellent, but clearly written by the nerdiest of nerds.
• Software Carpentry offers lots of open-source lessons and tutorials for scientific computing skills (github, Python, command line, R, SQL, and more!)
• Google is easily the most valuable resource for figuring things out. If you encounter an issue, chances are somebody else has also encountered it and has asked about it.

Protip: Google your error messages and look for links to Stack Overflow answers. This forum-based website has all the answers (but they might be snarky).

• The popular websites Code Academy, Rosalind, and Lynda have some great materials for learning Python and practicing bioinformatics skills. You will need university credentials to access Rosalind and Lynda, so check to see if your institution gives you access.

• Some papers that are helpful if/when you dive into the world of programming, including lots of gens from PLoS:

  • An Introduction to Programming for Bioscientists: A Python-Based Primer
  • Scientific Computing in General: Best Practices for Scientific Computing
  • Version control: Ten Simple Rules for Taking Advantage of Git and GitHub
  • Software development: Ten Simple Rules for Developing Usable Software in Computational Biology
  • Data storage: Ten Simple Rules for Digital Data Storage
  • Reproducible research: Ten Simple Rules for Reproducible Computational Research