The Software Sustainability Institute

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Top tips for better code reviews

Code review is known to be an effective way to improve software quality, foster peer learning and develop common ownership of a research software project. In practice, a code review is nothing else than a conversation between the author of the code and somebody else providing feedback on coding practices, readability or other aspects of code quality. If this sounds straightforward, an effective code review routine can be tricky to establish. Here are five tips for you to get started with code reviews, or get more of them.

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Five top tips for short-term mentoring

In this guide, Heather Turner shares her top tips for how mentors can set up a successful short-term mentoring relationship.
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Learning to Code from a mentor's perspective

By Mario Antonioletti, Learning to Code Mentorship Programme mentor I volunteered as a mentor as part of the SSI’s Beyond the Spreadsheet Research Software Camps. I was motivated by the fact that I wanted to set up a similar time-limited mentoring scheme for the Community of Edinburgh RSEs where synergies in domain expertise could be coupled with programming skills, or as part of the Edinburgh Carpentries where people would go back to their day jobs after a Carpentries course to try and apply what they have learned to their own projects/data where they may need a little help to get started and avoiding those inevitable brick walls.
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News

Drop-in software surgery at Research Software Camps

Do you have a research software challenge you would like to receive expert advice on? Come and ask an expert at the drop-in software surgery!
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The Research Software Camp: Next Steps in Coding starts today!

Welcome to the Research Software Camp: Next Steps in Coding! From today until the 27 May 2022, we'll focus on improving computational and training skills and exploring existing resources out there. 
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Malvika Sharan

SSI Fellow Malvika Sharan named a Jisc Community Champion

Congratulations to SSI Fellow Malvika Sharan for being named a Jisc Community Champion!

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Events

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"We were already following a lot of best practice and it was very good to get this confirmation. We're not computer scientists and don't come from a software development background - we're all scientific programmers - so it was good to get some confirmation that what we do is on the right track"

- Andreas Hegar, CGAT