December 2024
Welcome everyone to the JuRSE newsletter for December!
JuRSE (Jülich Research Software Engineering) is a grassroots community for all FZJ scientists and students who code and/or anyone interested in research software. (https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse)
The purpose of this newsletter is to update you about JuRSE community initiatives at FZJ and some of the national and international activities in Research Software Engineering.
Please feel free to forward this to any colleagues who may be interested in this topic and in joining the JuRSE Community.
Did you know that as well as a RSE Rocketchat channel open to all FZJ staff (https://chat.fz-juelich.de/invite/krTNBT) you can also join the national RSE Community on matrix (https://matrix.to/#/#de-rse.org:matrix.org ) hosted by the deRSE Association?
JuRSE news
FZJ joins the High Performance Software Foundation
JuRSE and JSC are happy to announce that FZJ is now an associate member of the High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF). The HPSF, a Linux Foundation project, aims at “advancing portable software for diverse hardware by increasing adoption, aiding community growth, and enabling development efforts, lowering barriers to productive use of today’s and future high performance computing systems”. With all the HPC systems available through JSC and all the great software written for these systems by the community, this clearly resonates with us. Together with strong partners from research and industry, we support the development of world-class open-source HPC software through a number of joint HPSF initiatives, boosting the three “P” of HPC: performance, portability, and productivity. It will also be FZJ’s goal to increase visibility and uptake of European software solutions such as EasyBuild and to strengthen the European HPC software ecosystem as a whole, together with our partner at CEA.
Reminder: Anaconda Update
We featured this in November’s newsletter but we think this issue is going to affect many people who may not have seen this news yet so we’re bringing this up again here.
As some of you may have heard, Anaconda changed their Terms of Service (ToS) in 2020, insisting that “government entities and non-profit entities with over 200 employees or contractors” must pay. That includes FZJ, no matter how many use this service. Once a single person from FZJ uses their channel, FZJ would be obliged to pay. Find out more about this and the alternatives available in our updated article:https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/the_latest/the-anaconda-is-squeezing-us
Open Hours (every Wednesday - https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-open-hours)
In December, we will be hosting our Open Hours on the Wednesday 11th December only and then we’re back in the new year on the 8th January 2025. All are welcome to come and talk to us about anything but in particular the Anaconda issue (above). This is an opportunity to learn from each other and expand our collective knowledge so everyone is welcome to join.
We are always happy to meet new RSEs at FZJ and to catch up with familiar faces. Some of the topics we discussed in November included Anaconda concerns, opportunities for PhD students to present their work, reproducible methods and tools for handling parameter studies of simulations, resources for scientific code development, and how to auto-generate interfaces and check compliance of data formats with machine-readable definitions. We look forward to more engaging conversations with you!
JuRSE Travel Grants
The call for travel grants is now open for deRSE25, the German RSE Conference taking place in February 2025 in Karlsruhe (more info on deRSE25 at the link below under National Initiatives). https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-travel-grants
JuRSE Code of the Month
The JuRSE Team want to shine a spotlight on the diverse and excellent research software that is being primarily developed at Forschungszentrum Jülich and to do this we’re showcasing one research software a month.
December’s Code of the Month is NEST, a simulator for spiking neuronal networks. As a well tested and efficient tool, NEST works on your laptop and also on the world’s largest supercomputers to study behaviour of large networks of neurons. Click through to our website (https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-code-of-the-month/december-2024) to find out what the JuRSE team like about this software.
HiRSE News
The JuRSE team work closely with the HiRSE project so we include their news here too.https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/collaborations/hirse_ps
Promoting research software: Made in Germany
We now have over 60 codes in this initiative. Check out the codes that are already taking part in this campaign: - https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/the-hirse-code-promotion
What is this initiative all about? Researchers, postdocs, and students at German universities and research centres write great research software. The HiRSE team wants to make that more visible by bringing your software to the attention of the RSE Community and beyond. We’re looking for research software created, extended and/or maintained by people working at German institutions to join our latest initiative. This is not meant exclusively, we of course welcome also software written by international teams, as long as there is a substantial contribution coming from Germany.
Here is our offer: You provide us with the details of your software using our formhttps://go.fzj.de/research_software_promotion and we’ll create your promo slide that will be shown ahead of a HiRSE Seminar and during HiRSE event breaks. If you have more ideas where this slide can be used, feel free to let us know (and use it yourself, of course)!
If you have any questions or would like to suggest a project that is not your own, please do not hesitate to contact us under hirse@fz-juelich.de.
National Initiatives
HIDA Training courses
Check out all the relevant courses for research software engineering on the HIDA course catalogue:https://www.helmholtz-hida.de/course-catalog/en/
Notes and Guidance on handling research software from the DFG
The German Research Foundation (DFG) recently published notes and guidance regarding the handling of research software in DFG-funding activities. https://www.dfg.de/en/basics-topics/basics-and-principles-of-funding/research-software
International Initiatives
The Zenodo - Software Heritage integration is here!
‘Forget the image of dusty libraries and yellowing parchments. In today’s digital landscape, the effort to preserve knowledge takes place in server farms and code repositories. Now two digital archives, Zenodo and Software Heritage, are working together with an integration aimed at safeguarding our shared scientific software legacy.‘
Continue reading: https://www.softwareheritage.org/2024/11/13/software-heritage-zenodo-integration/
Advent of Code
Are you joining in this year? This year’s Advent of Code started on Sunday 1st December (https://adventofcode.com/2024/about ). It is a fun way to practice your programming skills or learn a new programming language. Make some noise on the RSE rocket chat channel https://chat.fz-juelich.de/invite/krTNBT if you’re attempting it this year and let us know how you’re getting on.
Upcoming events
Webinar: High-Performance Computing and Software Sustainability: Toward Green Software Development
January 15, 2025 Online, in the webinar series Best Practices for HPC Software Developers
As the power consumption of data centers is becoming a hot topic, there is a widespread interest in green software development. This presentation aims to spark discussion on how software developers can produce better software in terms of more energy efficient approaches.
https://ideas-productivity.org/events/hpcbp-089-green-software
deRSE25 – the 5th Conference for Research Software Engineering, Karlsruhe
The call for submissions has now closed and reviewing is under way. The ticket prices have been announcedhttps://events.hifis.net/event/1741/page/514-conference-fees
Don’t forget that you can apply for a travel grant from JuRSE https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-travel-grants for this conference in February 2025.
RSE podcast episodes
The podcast series ‘Code for Thought’ is run by Peter Schmidt and has episodes about everything and anything to do with research software engineering. Episodes can be in German, English, and French.https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/1326658
November’s new episodes are:
- [DE] Eine kleine Reise durch das Land der Hochleistungsrechner - mit Georg Hager
- [EN] Enhancing Science - the eScience Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- [FR] Le calcul quantique à GENCI - Sabine Mehr et Félix Givois
- [EN] Champions for Change in research: Imperial College London and Cambridge University
Developer Stories (https://rseng.github.io/devstories/posts/ ) from Vanessa Sochat in the US features Dan Reed “HPC Dan”. This episode covers questions about the future of High Performance Computing, policy, and the technology space. Two ways to listen to it:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5HTQi1OkumJDxEe6jB7kiV?si=QoNq71ESR9qHD0f5xh8OgQ
Recommended reading
‘Identifying the Foundational Competencies of a Research Software Engineer’ - https://de-rse.org/blog/2024/10/08/identifying-the-foundational-competencies-of-an-RSE-en.html
‘Effective Metrics for Measuring and Enhancing Sustainability in Scientific Software’
‘Research Software Engineering: A Guide to the Open Source Ecosystem’by Matthias Bannert suggests that a solid programming skill level and self-operation is in reach for most researchers. And most importantly, investing is worth the effort: being able to code leverages field-specific expertise and fosters interdisciplinary collaboration as source code continues to become an important communication channel. https://rse-book.github.io/