+++
+++

# About the show

RSH is an interactive, streaming web show all about scientific
computing and research software.

Programming can be fun.  Research can be fun.  But when combined, many
skills fall through the gaps.  We think that computing is best learned
like an apprenticeship, but unfortunately most researchers don't have
access to high-quality computing mentorship.

We'll develop the program based on suggestions and also to maximize fun
for us, but broadly speaking we wish to:

* Have entertaining discussions about research software and
  computing.  Show why we enjoy it so much and how you can, too.

* Teach tips and tricks (and learn new ones ourselves, too) - at least
  introduce new ideas and point you where to look for more info.

* Take code submitted by users and go through it and discuss how we'd
  improve it - to show our whole thought process. We will do this constructively
  and also critically review our own codes which we have written some time
  ago.

* Show you the errors we make and how we get through them.  And do our
  own learning at the same time, too. We are not experts in everything and we
  believe in the pedagogy of errors and typos.

* We'll cover everything from research software and data to high-performance
  computing and Linux.

This is an open source production - anyone can help us develop RSH,
too.  [Join us!](https://github.com/researchsoftwarehour/)


## About us

[Radovan Bast](https://bast.fr) is a research software engineer
with background in theoretical chemistry.
He's worked in France, Stockholm, and now
Tromsø at the border between science, software, and computational
support and enjoys supporting multi-disciplinary research.
He now works as part of the [Sigma2 metacenter](https://documentation.sigma2.no/)
at the University of Tromsø, Norway, and
leads the [CodeRefinery](https://coderefinery.org) project.

Richard
Darst is a computational data scientist with background in network science and theoretical chemistry,
and has worked in the United States and Finland.  He now
works for [Aalto Scientific Computing](https://scicomp.aalto.fi) at
Aalto University, Finland.  They met through the [CodeRefinery](https://coderefinery.org) project,
which teaches best practices in research software, and also
collaborate on the [Nordic Research Software Engineer community
project](https://nordic-rse.org) and
[NordicHPC](https://nordichpc.github.io).

Together, we have decades of experience programming for science,
mentoring, and teaching computing. We have seen a *crisis of
computing*, where computing demands are increasing while there isn't a
corresponding increase in the *practical skills* that go along with
it.  Mentoring does not reach enough people, and teaching does not
take the role of hands-on mentoring or convey spirit of computing (and
also still doesn't reach enough people).
There is also lack of time and academic credit for investing time in improving
programming and computing skills.

Thus, we need another strategy.  We are trying this web show to
combine informal teaching with the *feeling and spirit* of computing.