Software Carpentry and the Hydrological Sciences

Scientists are spending an increasing amount of time building and
using hydrology software. However, most scientists are never taught
how to do this efficiently. As a result, many are unaware of tools and
practices that would allow them to write more reliable and
maintainable code with less effort. As hydrology models increase in
capability and enter use by a growing number of scientists and their
communities, it is important that the scientific software development
practices scale up to meet the challenges posed by increasing software
complexity, lengthening software lifecycles, a growing number of
stakeholders and contributers, and a broadened developer base that
extends from application domains to high performance computing
centers. Many of these challenges in complexity, lifecycles, and
developer base have been successfully met by the open source
community, and there are many lessons to be learned from their
experiences and practices. Additionally, there is much wisdom to be
found in the results of research studies conducted on software
engineering itself. Software Carpentry aims to bridge the gap between
the current state of software development and these known best
practices for scientific software development, with a focus on
hands-on exercises and practical advice.

In 2014, Software Carpentry workshops targeting earth/environmental
sciences and hydrological modeling have been organized and run at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the US Army Corps of Engineers,
the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System Annual Meeting, and the
Earth Science Information Partners Summer Meeting. In this
presentation, we will share some of the successes in teaching this
material, as well as discuss and present instructional material
specific to hydrological modeling.