By Mike Jackson.

Software Carpentry is gathering momentum within the UK. This year has already seen boot camps at University College London, Newcastle University, Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, The University of York and Oxford University. Boot camps open to all researchers and also those for specific communities (e.g. bioinformaticians or audio and music researchers) have both proven to be very popular. As a result, UK institutions are now beginning to integrate Software Carpentry into their existing teaching programmes.

After organising two boot camps, Steve McGough of the Digital Institute at Newcastle University expects to start running one boot camp every year. Software Carpentry is now an approved course for which Newcastle's PhD students can get credits needed to progress their degree. A student commented, "I'd rather do something useful like this for my credits than a course on copying cells in Excel".

Meanwhile, Ben Waugh at University College London is now running a Software Carpentry course for high-energy physics (HEP) postgraduates as part of the University of London intercollegiate lecture programme for HEP. To reinforce the taught material, these courses will include two, one-day events plus online discussions and possibly exercises or a larger development project. Mark Plumbley of Queen Mary University of London is planning something similar for media and arts technology postgraduates.

Together, these initiatives contribute to a future in which researchers are given the essential software development skills they require. We hope that others will be inspired by their example as we work towards a future in which such training is readily available to all researchers.