Design your code... (and write less of it)

26 November 2025 to 3 December 2025 - 13:00-16:00

Information Commons - Computer Room 3 (3.02)

RSE Team

All of our events may be recorded and shared via the University of Sheffield Kaltura platform so those who cannot attend may still benefit. We will consider your attendance implicit consent to this.

This course on Code Design introduces essential principles and best practices for writing clean, maintainable, and efficient code. It will introduce some standard design patterns that are useful to make your code more generic, scalable and that will make your life easier as your code base grows.

This event is for University of Sheffield researchers and research students only.

Prerequisite skills: You will need to have a basic understanding of how Python works.

Learning Objectives

After completing this course, participants should be able to:

• Understand the Importance of Code Design: Explain why good code design is crucial for maintainability, readability, reusability, and scalability.
• Apply Key Design Principles: Implement fundamental design principles such as DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)….
• Structure Code Effectively: Organise code into modules and packages.
• Write Clean and Readable Code: Follow Python naming conventions, write effective comments and documentation, and adhere to PEP 8 code formatting guidelines.
• Refactor Code for Improvement: Identify areas for improvement in existing code and apply refactoring techniques to enhance code quality.
• Create and Use a Basic Project: Build a simple Python project that incorporates the discussed design principles and patterns, reinforcing theoretical knowledge through practical application.
• Evaluate and Improve Code Quality: Assess the quality of their code using the learned principles and techniques, and continuously strive for improvement.

This course will be run in-person.

We are delighted to be able to make free at point of use training available to the research community, to enable better software and more open, reproducible research. However, free at point of use training is not free. The cost of a course can easily run to thousands of pounds, if preparation costs are taken into account.

If you sign up for a course, please make sure you either attend or cancel your booking. Bookings can usually be managed using myDevelopment or, failing that, by emailing rse@sheffield.ac.uk.

Running courses that are not fully attended wastes our funding (which is provided by taxpayers, charities and students, amongst others) and reduces our collective capacity to improve research outputs and researcher experiences.

Persistent failure to attend booked courses might result in you being excluded from future training opportunities.

More details and registration via myDevelopment.

Please note: This workshop will run over 2 half days from 13:00-16:00 on Wednesday 26th November and 13:00-16:00 Wednesday 3rd December 2025 in Information Commons - Computer Room 3 (3.02).

Course material: https://fair2-for-research-software.github.io/FAIR_Code_design/