• Question: How (if at all) do you use programming skills in the work that you do? Would it be useful to learn some basic coding skills when applying for a degree in STEM?

    Asked by anon-351151 on 7 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Ansh Bhatnagar

      Ansh Bhatnagar answered on 7 Mar 2023:

      Hi Ben!

      Programming is incredibly useful for physicists, as it allows us to automate a whole range of tasks which saves us a lot of time to think about more useful things. Back in the day things like orbits of planets would be calculated by hand, step by step, which would take so much time to compute. Now we have computers that can calculate these things in seconds, and it’s incredibly useful to be able to program such tasks.

      I personally use programming to calculate different things, such as how, at the start of the universe, really heavy particles may decay to particles we are more familiar with.

      While it is really useful to learn coding, I wouldn’t worry about learning it before your degree. You can give it a go if you have the time, and there are many ways to learn online such as Codecademy, however pretty much all physics degree courses teach coding in their first year anyway!

      Python is a very useful and fairly simple programming language to learn for physics!

    • Photo: Stuart Clare

      Stuart Clare answered on 7 Mar 2023:

      Hi Ben,
      I think that every scientist that I work with does come coding of some sort. We are often dealing with large amounts of data and writing code to analyse it or improve the collection of data is a key skill. In my work I programme the MRI scanner to do new things, I programme other bits of equipment to work alongside the MRI scanner for the experiment I’m doing, I write code to simulate the results I’m hoping to get and I often write code to analyse the data. Learning how to code will be a great skill for you to learn – and you can do so many fun things as well. It doesn’t really matter what programming language you learn (although if you force me to pick then I would say python). Once you have the basic idea of how programming works then you will be able to learn how to code for whatever specific application.
      Cheers,
      Stuart

    • Photo: Fergus McKiddie

      Fergus McKiddie answered on 7 Mar 2023:

      Yes, it’s incredibly useful to be able to code. Python is a good one to start with as many packages now are based around it. Biggest thing is don’t be frightened of it, it can be frustrating when things don’t work but it can also be really good fun as well as useful

    • Photo: Lucien Heurtier

      Lucien Heurtier answered on 7 Mar 2023:

      Definitely YES.

      Although I work in theoretical physics, using a lot of maths, telescope observations, laboratory data, it is ALWAYS needed for me to program, at least a little bit.

      These days, a lot of science also involves artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML), and for this a lot of coding is necessary. This is a very promising field, and both researchers and engineers will need it more and more.

      There are several coding languages that you may want to learn, but python is a very useful and very common one. It helps draw very nice pictures with a computer, and also program routines in a relatively short time.

    • Photo: Helena Cotterill

      Helena Cotterill answered on 7 Mar 2023:

      Hi BenL!

      So I don’t use programming really in my work now, but I used it every day back when I was doing my research as a student! Programming is a really useful skill for a scientist and I used it to do a lot of data analysis of some pretty large climate datasets, as well using it to produce images to show this analysed data and do some statistical calculations.

      The programme I used for this was specially written for this particular purpose and was used by people in my research group. The programming language was IDL which I knew nothing about before starting my research work and I just taught myself the bits I needed to know (with the support of my supervisor and research group!). A lot of the programming you would use as a scientist might be similar in the sense that it is usually very specialised for a particular purpose.

      Also, I had zero experience with programming before I started university, but they taught us the basics of C during my first year. Whilst I never used that particular language again, it was very helpful to teach me the sort of logic that programming uses. I also taught myself a little bit of Python during my research, but didn’t use it too much.

    • Photo: Barak Gilboa

      Barak Gilboa answered on 8 Mar 2023:

      I believe some coding skills are essential for every scientist today. As a Physicist I needed to code programs to run instrument, collect data, analyse data and run statistical measures as well (as my first practical tutor taught me: No experimental value as a meaning without an error estimate).
      While in the past you might have been content to do Chemistry or Biology with no programming skills, this is changing rapidly. Regrading specific languages (and my assumption is that tools like Copilot, based on the same model as chatGPT will blur the differences) Python is very useful for machine learning/AI and general science, while R is more common among people who do stats, but you can do pretty much everything in both.

    • Photo: Vicky Fawcett

      Vicky Fawcett answered on 8 Mar 2023:

      Programming is very useful in STEM related careers – for me, I use Python every day at work.
      If you are interested in coding, you could try a couple of online courses. However, I wouldn’t worry about learning to code before you do a degree, since this is what you will be learning at university!

    • Photo: Nikita Klimovich

      Nikita Klimovich answered on 9 Mar 2023:

      As others have said, programming will inevitably be useful within any field of STEM. At a bare minimum, even the least-coding centred research will produce quantitative data that needs to be analysed, plotted, and compared to models. All of those steps require some amount of coding, so learning the basic skills on your own or through courses will absolutely come in handy.

      The exact specifics of what program language you use and what you need to know within it will vary greatly depending on the particular work you end up doing, so it’s most efficient to just learn it as you go. With that said, you will always need some sort of understanding of how variables, functions, and loops work, so taking any sort of introductory coding course will absolutely help.

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