What motivates someone to learn how to code as a scientist? How do you harness the excitement of solving problems quickly and make the connection to the benefits of coding in your scientific work? This week on the show, we speak with Ben Lear and Christopher Johnson about their book “Coding For Chemists.”

Christopher is an associate professor of chemistry at Stony Brook University. Ben is a professor of chemistry at Penn State’s Eberly College of Science. They’re long-time friends who decided to collaborate on a book after discussing the challenges of teaching coding to chemistry students.

The book targets chemists and other researchers who want to streamline common workflows with Python. It covers core Python concepts, data visualization, and data analysis topics by sharing common problems encountered in chemical research and presenting a complete Python-based solution for each problem.

We discuss how they collaborated on the book and decided what libraries and tools to include. We cover how LLM tools have affected classroom teaching and require new techniques to reinforce learning. We also dig into what motivates students to learn how to code.

Course Spotlight: Defining Python Functions With Optional Arguments

In this video course, you’ll learn about Python optional arguments and how to define functions with default values. You’ll also learn how to create functions that accept any number of arguments using args and kwargs.

Topics:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:06 – Ben’s background and starting with Python
00:04:34 – Chris’ background and starting with Python
00:07:16 – What has sped up Python for your use?
00:08:22 – How did idea for the book start?
00:11:30 – Shifting publisher and new release time frame
00:12:24 – Three potential audiences
00:13:20 – The ubiquitous need for programming skills in science
00:15:05 – Difficult workflows with chemistry equipment
00:16:06 – What is a chart recorder?
00:16:34 – Working with proprietary equipment and exporting data
00:23:37 – Explaining how programming will help chemists
00:27:31 – Finding the problems to solve
00:29:09 – The classic common chemistry workflow
00:30:48 – Teaching Python in a classroom and starting with functions
00:35:05 – Helping students cultivate inspiration
00:37:06 – LLM and AI use by students
00:41:19 – Video Course Spotlight
00:42:36 – Using Spyder IDE and Positron
00:45:29 – How does the book cover notebooks and managing packages?
00:48:08 – Using marimo for archiving and sharing projects
00:50:25 – What was difficult to put into the book?
00:54:04 – What were you eager to share in the book?
00:55:54 – Teaching students about file management
00:58:13 – Sharing tools to plot data
01:01:45 – Choosing not to teach pandas and using NumPy arrays instead
01:04:03 – How can people learn more about the book?
01:05:20 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
01:07:58 – What do you want to learn next?
01:10:50 – How can people follow your work?
01:12:15 – Thanks and goodbye

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