Software training for the next generation of physicists: joint experience of LHCb and ALICE

¹ European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)—Genève, Switzerland
² Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)— Italy
³ The University of Manchester— United Kingdom
⁴ DXC Technology—Frankfurt, Germany
⁵ École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne— Switzerland
⁶ University of Tennessee— USA
⁷ Universität Zürich— Switzerland

^* e-mail: dario.berzano@cern.ch
^** e-mail: christopher.burr@cern.ch

Published online: 17 September 2019

Abstract

The need for good software training is essential in the HEP community. Unfortunately, current training is non-homogeneous and the definition of a common baseline is unclear, making it difficult for newcomers to proficiently join large collaborations such as ALICE or LHCb. In the last years, both collaborations have started separate efforts to tackle this issue through training workshops, via Analysis Tutorials (organized by the ALICE Juniors since 2014) and the Starterkit (organized by LHCb students since 2015). In 2017, ALICE and LHCb have for the first time joined efforts to provide combined training by identifying common topics, such as version control systems (Git) and programming languages (e.g. Python). Given the positive experience and feedback, this collaboration will be repeated in the future. We will illustrate the teaching methods, experience and feedback from our first common training workshop. We will also discuss our efforts to extend our format to other HEP experiments for future iterations.