GoalAndAudience

Goal

The SciRuby book intends to show the power of Ruby in the context of scientific endeavour. Other computer languages like FORTRAN, C and Python still play a large role in science and we aim to change that by showing people that Ruby allows for easier and often better expression of complex ideas. Bottom line is that Ruby increases productivity, in particular important for busy people who spend most of their waking life in research, and it is up to us to advocate that.

Audience

The intended audience is primarily the existing community of coding scientists (or scientists coding). Few of them have software engineering degrees so, in the process of showing how Ruby can elegantly help with complex logic there is also an opportunity to show (for example) the benefits of refactoring and unit testing.

How

What will work best is showing by example, touching on different disciplines in science, championed by the respective authors and editors.

The proposed layout of the book is a first half on generic Ruby relevant for our audience. The second half consists of chapters in different (cool) scientific domains like meteo, bioinformatics, clustering etc. The latter 'studies' can be written by a group of people, led by one editor with the right domain expertise.

For most scientists seeing is believing. It would be an idea to have an example in every chapter starting from one of the other major computer languages like FORTRAN, C/C++, Python, Perl, (Matlab, R) and show in a 3-4 refactoring steps what the Ruby alternative can be. Those examples should entice any reader to go and get the RubyBook.

When

A lot of the material is going to be written publically online. A book may be published on paper once there is enough material (there is no proposed publishing date).

I think the central aim should be an online book - that will have the greatest impact on our audience and beyond [Pj]

Note to Contributors

The following needs to be rewritten. Less hype - just 'can do', because that is who we are. An open invitation to anyone who wants to contribute is great! [Pj]

For many months, we have invited scientists in all fields to share some parts of their projects with us. The resulting list of studies is packed with fascinating research from people working at the frontier of human understanding. After seeing some of the work they are doing, we believe we can isolate certain techniques that apply specifically and especially to computer programming in the name of science.

This book – which is really an instruction manual – will incorporate their work in a series of case studies. Using real code as examples, it will show how science is being done right now on computers using freely distributed, open-source technologies. Scientists who read this book will gain a basic toolkit for building their next great discoveries.

We are still on the lookout for new case studies. If you know of a research project that uses computers in a new way, or if you have written a research widget that you are especially proud of, and you would like your work to be featured in this book, please e-mail us. Anyone who contributes something useful will be mentioned in the book; if we draw heavily on your work, we will highlight your project and institution in a sidebar. Thank you for your interest.

-- Ara Howard and Justin Crawford