Faith Okamoto

Code unto others as you would have them code unto you

👋🏽 My CV is available. 👋🏽

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  • Useful error messages

    How did I mess up?

    By Faith Okamoto

    Posted on January 10, 2025

    Since I made two recent pull requests about graceful errors, I figured I’d talk about why this is so important. In general, you should try to anticipate common issues the end-user might run into. Those errors should cause useful, descriptive error/warning messages. [Read More]
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  • Do a final cleanup

    December 2024

    By Faith Okamoto

    Posted on December 23, 2024

    I’ve blathered on for ten posts about my code habits. Now I’ll look at other scientists’ code. This blog post is the first of a series. Once a month, I’ll critique the code released by a recent paper. Hopefully concrete examples will make clear principles I’ve discussed. [Read More]
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  • Explain your science

    Including your assumptions

    By Faith Okamoto

    Posted on December 7, 2024

    Science code, at least theoretically, represents something tangible. Modeling the spread of a virus in simulated populations. Parsing gads of sensor output for peaks of relevant data. Graphing statistics on tests taken across a country. Because we deal with stuff that has concrete meaning, concrete and defensible constraints crop up... [Read More]
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  • Keeping a "dry lab" lab notebook

    What did I do yesterday?

    By Faith Okamoto

    Posted on November 23, 2024

    I define “dry lab” as “science with computers” (e.g. data analysis), “wet lab” as “science with physical things” (e.g. mice), and “field work” as “science outdoors” (e.g. specimen collection). My wet lab courses taught how to keep a lab notebook. I mostly hear of them for wet lab or field... [Read More]
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