UCL for Code in Research

Here we touch on some ways to build classes in C++ and how class design such as class hierarchies can help to make code more readable, more maintainable and less error prone (amongst other things). Klaus Iglberger and I also touch on design patterns and briefly what other programming paradigms exist apart from object oriented programming (OOP).Linkshttps://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-forgotten-history-of-oop-88d71b9b2d9f The forgotten history of OOPhttps://medium.com/@ryan_forrester_/struct-inheritance-in-c-comprehensive-guide-2027689d10ed structs and classeshttps://www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com/index.html Enterprise Integration Patterns by Gregory Hohpehttps://martinfowler.com Martin Fowler author of so many books, including one on enterprise patternshttps://martinfowler.com/bliki/GangOfFour.html Martin F's write-up of the Gang of Four bookhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns Wiki page on the book 'Design Patterns - Elements of Reusable Object Oriented Software' written by E Gamma, R Helm, R Johnson and J Vlissides. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7408317M/Design_Patternshttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Software-Design-Principles-Patterns-High-Quality/dp/1098113160 book by Klaus Iglberger: "C++ Software Design: Design Principles and Patterns for High-Quality Software"Don't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Inheritance, templates, function overloading - they all fall into the category of polymorphism in programming. My guest Klaus Iglberger and I discuss the different aspects of how this could be done with C++. Linkshttps://www.stroustrup.com/glossary.html#Gpolymorphism Glossary provided by Bjarne Stroustruphttps://cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/polymorphism/https://ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/05_stratchey_1967.pdf Christian Strachey's article where he introduces polymorphismhttps://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/6041.6042 Article by Cardelli and Wegner On Understanding Type, Data Abstraction and Polymorphismhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_method_table virtual tables (vtables)https://pabloariasal.github.io/2017/06/10/understanding-virtual-tables/https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/vtable-and-vptr-in-cpp/https://belaycpp.com/2021/10/01/history-of-c-templates-from-c-style-macros-to-concepts/ A history of templateshttps://www.stroustrup.com/dne.html Bjarne Stroustrup: the Design and Evolution of C++Don't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Exceptions are essentials, as are error codes. Writes Bjarnes Stroustrup. And so on our 3rd stop through C++ I talk about what you could do when things go wrong. And what you can do to prevent errors - with testing. My guest is, again Klaus Iglberger.The sounds you're hearing are from the excellent https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk BBC sound library - free of use for non-commercial purposes. Links:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_handling_(programming)https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2019/p1947r0.pdf B Stroustrup's article 'C++ exceptions and alternatives'https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/using_exceptions.html GNU exception manualhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errno.h the <errno> macrohttps://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Error-Codes.htmlhttps://archive.org/details/working-effectively-with-legacy-code/ Michael Feathers "Working Effectively with Legacy Code"https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2015/p0003r0.html#2.0 what went on with C++98 exceptions? https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180928-00/?p=99855 another discussion on the "old" exception handling in C++Tools:https://undo.io/products/undo-c-plusplus/ Undohttps://github.com/catchorg/Catch2 Catch2https://google.github.io/googletest/ Google testshttps://github.com/emil-e/rapidcheck RapidCheck property based testingDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

In the beginnings were...data and data types. Which is where we begin our journey through C++. The language provides for a range of interesting, fundamental, complex and custom types - one of which is a set of pointer types. My guest in this episode is Marc Hartung from Dive in Berlin, Germany.Links:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointer_(computer_programming) summary of what pointers arehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_(programming_language) one of the early uses of pointers in the APL languagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_management article on memory managementhttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/cpp/type-conversions-and-type-safety-modern-cpp an article on type conversionhttps://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/_005f_005fint128.html GCC compiler and support for 128bit integershttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B_Standard_Library C++ Standard Libraryhttps://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/242604.242613 Ań article on how the C++ Standard Library emergedhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Template_Library the Standard Template Library (not to be confused with the C++ Standard Lib)Don't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

This first episode is about introducing C++, where it started, how it evolved. You will hear from 2 practitioners: Klaus Iglberger (C++ coach/trainer) and Marc Hartung (tech lead at Dive in Berlin).Here are a few links for you to follow up on:https://www.stroustrup.com The Home Page of Bjarne Stroustrup who created C++. There are plenty of links for you to followhttps://isocpp.org/std/the-standard The C++ standard homepage https://www.mn.uio.no/tjenester/it/hjelp/programvare/simula/versions/simula-1967/commonbasedefinition1967.pdf the specs of Simula 67, still available online. Simula inspired B Stroustrup for C++https://www.divecae.com Dive the company Marc Hartungs works at who produce simulation software (hydrodynamics)https://github.com/igl42 Klaus Iglberger's GitHubDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

In this last episode of this course, I talk to Itamar Turner-Trauring who created the website PythonSpeed and spent a considerable time on finding ways to make Python code faster and more efficient. Python and its ecosystem also have great tools how you can measure performance.Links:https://pythonspeed.com a set of articles and recommendations on how to improve your performancehttps://blog.sentry.io/python-performance-testing-a-comprehensive-guide/ a general blog post on performance testinghttps://uwpce-pythoncert.github.io/SystemDevelopment/profiling.html https://uwpce-pythoncert.github.io/SystemDevelopment/index.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_performancehttps://python-102.readthedocs.io/en/latest/performance.htmlhttps://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/datastructures.htmlhttps://www.green-algorithms.orghttps://doi.org/10.1145/356635.356640 Donald Knuth's paper on over optimisationhttps://wiki.python.org/moin/TimeComplexityhttps://blog.jetbrains.com/dataspell/2023/08/polars-vs-pandas-what-s-the-difference/ comparing Polars with PandaProfiling toolshttps://pyinstrument.readthedocs.io/en/latest/https://docs.python.org/3/library/profile.htmlhttps://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html the time function in Pythonhttps://docs.python.org/3/library/timeit.html another function to measure time in Pythonhttps://jiffyclub.github.io/snakeviz/ a graphic profile viewerhttps://bloomberg.github.io/memray/ flexible memory profilerhttps://github.com/benfred/py-spyhttps://www.wrighters.io/profiling-python-code-with-py-spy/https://github.com/P403n1x87/austin-python The Python wrapper for the Austin profilerDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

In this episode I talk to Jeremiah Miller - a software engineer - and Max Albert - a research software engineer in the research software group at the University of Southampton about refactoring and design patterns.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patternshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_codehttps://www.distributed-systems.net/index.php/books/ds4/ book by A Tanenbaumhttps://refactoring.com The Refactoring book by Martin Fowlerhttps://martinfowler.com/architecture/https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/https://martinfowler.comhttps://www.patternlanguage.com the original book by Christopher Alexander on design patterns in architecture - for towns, cities etc. This book inspired software engineers to define a set of design patterns on how to structure codehttps://refactoring.guru/design-patterns Max recommended Sandi and her tips and recommendations on codinghttps://sandimetz.com/99bottles the idea of making things as identical as possible to sniff out design breaks or changeshttps://refactoring.guru/design-patterns another website on design patterns and refactoringSome books:Design Patterns - Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides, Addison-Wesley, 1995, ISBN 0-201-63361-2Enterprise Integration Patterns Gregor Hohpe, Bobby Woole, Addison-Wesley, 2004, ISBN 0-321-20068-3Don't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

In this episode I talk to Monika Byrne Svata, Agile Delivery Manager at UCL about project management and in particular Scrum and Kanban. GitHub has features, like Issues and Projects that can help you stay on top of your software projects.Linkshttp://www.linkedin.com/in/monikabyrnesvata Monika's LinkedIn profilehttps://docs.github.com/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with-projects/learning-about-projects/about-projects GitHub projects documentationhttps://www.atlassian.com/software/jira JIRAhttps://trello.com/home Trellohttps://agilemanifesto.org Agile Manifestohttps://www.scrum.org/resources/what-scrum-module Scrum, a popular agile methodologyhttps://www.agile42.com/en/blog/scrum-history Scrum historyhttps://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban Kanban methodologyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban a bit of background to Kanbanhttps://beza1e1.tuxen.de/waterfall.html Waterfall methodshttps://digital.ai/resource-center/analyst-reports/state-of-agile-report/ annual report on all things agileDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Documentating software is part of the life of software engineers. But what kind of documentation do we need? In this episode I take you through three levels of documentation: the basic README and LICENSE files everyone should have, how to be good at writing git commit messages and using tools to turn your source code comments into browsable documentation.Linkshttps://www.sphinx-doc.org/https://pdoc.dev/docs/pdoc.htmlhttps://docs.python.org/3/library/pydoc.htmlhttps://wiki.python.org/moin/DocumentationToolshttps://peps.python.org/pep-0287/ reStructuredText Docstring Formathttps://github.com/matiassingers/awesome-readme some README exampleshttps://dev.to/documatic/awesome-readme-examples-for-writing-better-readmes-3eh3https://www.gitkraken.com/learn/git/best-practices/git-commit-message GIT commit messaginghttps://www.warp.dev/terminus/git-commit-history Git Commit historyDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Testing your software is part of development. In this episode I talk about different types of testing, automated tests, legacy code etc. My guest is Stef Piatek from UCL who tells us how he approaches testing in his daily work.Linkshttps://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.htmlhttps://docs.pytest.org/https://docs.pytest.org/en/7.1.x/how-to/monkeypatch.html PyTest Monkeypatchhttps://agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html test driven development TDDhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programminghttps://joss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/review_criteria.html criteria for open source software reviews, which includes a section on testinghttps://www.freecodecamp.org/news/a-practical-guide-to-start-opensource-contributions/https://docs.github.com/en/actions GitHub Actionshttps://martinfowler.com Martin Fowler's great web site. Also look out for his book:Working Effectively With Legacy Code - Michael Feathers, 2004, ISBN: 8601400968741Don't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

In this episode I'll be discussing data formats such as CSV, JSON and YAML. My guest is Nick Radcliffe from Stochastic Solutions and the Uni. Edinburgh. Nick's expertise is in data science and he has a lot to share about data, data formats and how to use them.Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/njradcliffe/ Nick's LinkedIn profilehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values CSV formatshttps://www.json.org/json-en.html JSONhttps://json-ld.org JSON for linked datahttps://json-schema.org JSON schemahttps://yaml.org YAMLhttps://parquet.apache.org Parquet by Apachehttps://hdfgroup.github.io/hdf5/ HDF5Librarieshttps://numpy.orghttps://scipy.orghttps://scikit-learn.org/stable/http://www.tdda.info test driven data analysisDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Python is one of the most widely used programming languages in research and science. How did it come to that. And what makes Python special? It's something I discuss with my guest in this episode, Robin Wilson, who also takes us through some of the less favourable or more complex aspects of the language.Linkshttp://www.rtwilson.com Robert Wilsonhttps://blog.rtwilson.com Robert's blog postshttps://www.python.orghttps://anaconda.org Anaconda Python distributionhttps://jupyter.org all things Jupyterhttps://ipython.org iPythonhttps://inference-review.com/article/the-origins-of-pythonhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programmingPython libraries for sciencehttps://numpy.org https://scipy.org https://pandas.pydata.orghttps://scikit-learn.org/stable/Don't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

In this episode we look into more essential Git commands, such as branching and merging. Branching and merging are key concepts that help you develop code or even text documents in a team. They help you maintain different versions of files and work on them independently.Another element of collaborative working is provided by GitHub: the pull request. Pull request are a great way to do code reviews, which avoids introducing bugs and also learn from each other.In my conversations Sam and Eirini talk about these key features and their experiences with it.Links:https://git-scm.com/ Git againhttps://martinfowler.com/articles/branching-patterns.html Martin Fowler's blog post on branching patternshttps://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests/about-pull-requests explains the mechanics of pull requests in more detailhttps://github-pages.ucl.ac.uk/rsd-engineeringcourse/ Lecture notesDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Peter Schmidt - the host of this podcast - interviews Sam Harrison, an environmental modeller at the UK Centre for ecology and hydrology. Is it version control important for his research? what tool does he use? How he learn it? Links and transcript available in the show notes.About Samhttps://www.ceh.ac.uk/staff/samuel-harrisonhttps://www.ceh.ac.uk/About Githttps://git-scm.com/https://github.com/git/git/https://github.com/git/git/tree/v0.99 (almost) first version of Git from 2005https://github-pages.ucl.ac.uk/rsd-engineeringcourse/ Lecture notesDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

In this last episode of the companion podcast for the C++ course at UCL, I invited both Klaus Iglberger and Marc Hartung (Dive, Berlin) to go through some aspects of parallel computing. But also to look a little bit ahead of what's in store for C++ in future standards. And how the language may help you in your career.Links:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NReDubvNjRg&list=PLY_qIufNHc2-Dk9IVNtgoF4uhKRszjJPz Cpp Conference (Cpp Con) Back to basics YouTube 2023https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRGRTvfOxb4&list=PLY_qIufNHc2950NLOeUFuO0DsqjAZ6cG0 Cpp Conference (Cpp Con) Back to basics YouTube 2024https://cppcast.com/ A podcast dedicated to all things C++https://adspthepodcast.com/ ADSP (Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs) Podcasthttps://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/c-software-design/9781098113155/ Klaus Iglberger's book on "C++ Software Design"https://blogs.fau.de/hager/hpc-book HPC book with lots of material on parallel computing Georg Hager, Gerhard Wellein I'd like to thank UCL and the UCL Advanced Research Computing Centre for their support and creating this show. In particular David Perez-Suarez, Michael McLeod and Mashy Green.Don't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Marc Hartung and I will discuss distributed memory in parallel computing in this episode, with tools like OpenMPI. We also discuss some of the hardware aspects around HPC systems and how shared and distributed memory computations differ.Links:https://www.open-mpi.org OpenMPI homepagehttps://docs.open-mpi.org/ the docs for OpenMPIhttps://www.mpi-forum.org The MPI Forum (who write the MPI standard)http://openshmem.org/site/ OpenSHMEM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_memory summary page on distributed memoryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand InfiniBand network solution https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/01/31/crays-slingshot-interconnect-is-at-the-heart-of-hpes-hpc-and-ai-ambitions/ Slingshot network solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitioned_global_address_space https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/von-Neumann-bottleneck the bottleneck named after John von Neumannhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point_operations_per_second overview of FLOPS (floating point operations per second)https://www.openmp.org/wp-content/uploads/HybridPP_Slides.pdf OpenMP and OpenMPI working together in a hybrid solutionhttps://blogs.fau.de/hager/hpc-book Georg Hager/Gerhard Wellein book on HPC for scientists and engineers Don't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Parallel programming is a huge, exciting and evolving field. Together with my guest Marc Hartung from Dive in Berlin, Germany, we try to cover some aspects of it: including OpenMP, how to synchronise data etc. Links:https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/memory_model the C++ memory modelhttps://www.openmp.org OpenMP home pagehttps://www.openmp.org/resources/openmp-compilers-tools/ Compilers for OpenMPhttps://gcc.gnu.org/projects/gomp/ the GNU OpenMP compilerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law Amdahl's "law"https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1465482.1465560 the paper from Amdahlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threading_Building_Blocks TBBhttps://github.com/uxlfoundation/oneTBB GitHub link for TBBhttps://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicMultiThreading.html Eigenhttps://help.rc.ufl.edu/doc/Memory:_Shared_vs_Distributed one of the links discussing shared and distributed memory in parallel computingDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

How can we measure the performance (run-time, memory usage etc) of our C++ code? And what does performance mean, anyway. These and other questions are the topic of this episode - with my guest Klaus Iglberger, C++ engineer, tutor and mentor. Memoryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_memory_access something about memory accesshttps://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/216585.216588 Ań article on 'Hitting the memory wall' how fast can memory access be?https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/xl-c-and-cpp-aix/13.1.3?topic=performance-managing-memory-efficiently-c-only what can we do to make memory usage more efficient Toolshttps://valgrind.org Valgrind profilerhttps://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/tools/oneapi/vtune-profiler.html vtune profilerhttps://ftp.gnu.org/old-gnu/Manuals/gprof-2.9.1/html_mono/gprof.html gprof profiler from GNUhttps://quick-bench.com Quick online Benchmarking toolhttps://godbolt.org see what your compiler actually doeshttps://github.com/google/googletest Google C++ test frameworkhttps://github.com/boost-ext/ut UT test frameworkhttps://github.com/google/benchmark Google benchmark toolhttps://github.com/catchorg/Catch2 catch2 frameworkhttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/profiling Profiling with Visual StudioMischttps://medium.com/swlh/reliable-performance-testing-in-c-1df7a3ba398 article on performance testinghttps://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1375&context=tme Historical review of complexity evaluationshttps://web.mit.edu/16.070/www/lecture/big_o.pdf The Big O NotationDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Software libraries play a crucial role in software development, and C++ is no exception. Klaus and I walk through the different aspects of building, using and selecting libraries. Links:https://cmake.org CMake toolhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_(computing) write up on software libraries with a bit of historyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format the ELF Format for shared libs (executable and linkable format)https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-7.3.0/gcc/Link-Options.html Link options of the g++ compilerhttps://www.toptal.com/c-plus-plus/c-plus-plus-understanding-compilation An overview of how compilation workshttps://cplusplus.com/articles/Gw6AC542/ a write up on headers and includes - with a mention of header guardshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z23_(computer) the Zuse Z23 computer I mentionedOh, and the title is inspired by a book from the Japanese author M Aoyama called 'What You're Looking For Is In The Library'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_You_Are_Looking_For_Is_in_the_LibraryDon't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt

Welcome to the new podcast from the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK.  A companion podcast for courses on Research Computing at UCL.In this first season we'll be presenting the course on Research Computing with C++. And this short teaser explains how it all works. Have fun!Don't be shy - say HiThis podcast is brought to you by the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College London, UK. Producer and Host: Peter Schmidt