Diego Barneche: What I've Learned

One of the great things SWC has taught me was how to be organized and transparent in what I do: pipelining scripts and files, avoiding repetition, organizing projects under version control, testing my functions, you name it. All my PhD chapters are now 100% controlled, meaning that I can reproduce everything from the very first day of the project until the date of submission. I can also now collaborate better, which is a fundamental skill to master in science.

Years ago, I would never imagine that for each publication/project I would have one single directory that is so organized and clean that I could reproduce one entire manuscript/report by running a couple of lines of code. Moreover, not keeping zillions of versions of text files and figures is a great relief not just for the present but also for the future if I ever need to revisit past projects. The more I master these skills, the more my productivity and confidence increase. It's definitely one of the best intellectual investments I've ever made.

I have been working in R packages for the different projects I am involved with, and two of them are available on GitHub at https://github.com/dbarneche. If you are interested in my work please follow me on Twitter as @dbarneche or keep an eye on our lab website at http://acropora.bio.mq.edu.au/people/diego-barneche/.