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Giving a short lecture/lab on Docker/containers today. I think the tutorials that say that "Docker is simple!" are doing students a disservice. It's a hard concept for students to wrap their head around, especially the idea of being able to use them to run services.Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 9 Retweets ❤️ 63 Favorites Mood -1 🙁
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I know the tutorials are well meaning, it's that they make it sound like it's trivial when it's anything but.Permalink On twitter.com
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Granted, the majority of tutorials are for sysadmins who already do things like run Virtual Machines.Permalink On twitter.com
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I don't have the solution to this and I anticipate a lot of confusion on their end. We'll just have to have a discussion about the confusing parts.Permalink On twitter.com
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Just so I'm putting my money where my mouth is, here are my confusing notes on Docker. github.com/laderast/BMI535slides/blob/master/06_Intro_to_Docker.mdPermalink On twitter.com
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Ok, I'm back. Some major stumbling points: - Virtual Machines versus Containers - Docker Images versus Containers and which actions you can do on what - Dockerfiles build on Docker Images, not containersPermalink On twitter.com
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- Volumes seemed to go ok, since I ran a GATK container and showed how to access files in it. - All of this is a lot to understand for computational reproducibility. I'd love any tips on how to reduce cognitive load here.On twitter.com
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I'm not having them make their own Dockerfile, because that can be a long and frustrating process. We'll use mybinder.org to build a reproducible computational notebook.Permalink On twitter.com
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I'm beginning to wonder whether talking about Bare Metal/VMs/Containers is worth it for students. That is how they work, but maybe a little too deep at the beginning.Permalink On twitter.com
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I think we could abstract that away at first, because I'm not sure what that buys students.Permalink On twitter.com
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The real main point for our students is reproducibility - having the same software environment as someone who did the analysis.Permalink On twitter.com