Resources

Resources

Although good programming is not a science, there is always value in learning from the mistakes of others. Below are a few links to resources which are hopefully helpful or interesting. Try things out with your own programming, but beware of the anti-pattern. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern

• The Daily WTF: http://thedailywtf.com/ "The Daily WTF is your how-not-to guide for developing software."

Style Guides

Sometimes the best advice is to see how others organize their software

• Firefox Style Guide: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Coding_Style
• Google Style Guide: http://code.google.com/p/google-styleguide/
• MATLAB Style Guide: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/2529-matlab-programming-style-guidelines

Scientific Software

Do you really want to know all the details all the details on why 0.1 + 0.2 != 0.3 then you should read "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic" http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html

Math and Science Programs

Basic references for programming in a few select scientific programming languages

• Mathematica: http://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/GettingStartedOverview.html
• Mathematica: http://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/KeyboardShortcutListing.html
• MATLAB: http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/getting-started-with-matlab.html

References

In case you need to cite something (or just want to read more) the following are good books and articles about programming.

• Brooks, Frederick P. (1975). The mythical man-month: essays on software engineering. Reading, Mass, Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
• Mc Connell, Steve. (1993). Code complete: a practical handbook of software construction. Redmond, Wash, Microsoft Press.
• Wilson Greg, et al. (2014) Best Practices for Scientific Computing. PLoS Biol 12(1): e1001745. (http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001745)