A few weeks ago I joined The Carpentries Latin America. The Carpentries is a community whose mission is to teach basic programming and data science skills to researchers around the world. The Carpentries Latin America is a group that works to extend the initiative of The Carpentries throughout the countries of this region.
I have joined the team of Spanish translators; a team dedicated to translating and maintaining The Carpentries classes in Spanish. The first activity in which I got involved was the translation of the “Data Analysis and Visualization in Python for Ecologists” lesson. I translated an episode and got involved in the revision process of another one. The experience was extraordinary. Now I want to share with you some learnings this first project left me:
- Translation projects are managed with Github, a collaborative development platform that allows managing the repository of a project using the Git version control system. Being part of this project has given me the opportunity to deepen in the use of Git and Github.
- Documents are written in Markdown, a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax. In the translation process, I had the opportunity to experiment with Markdown.
- Indirectly, and thanks to this project, I was able to know about the importance and growth of static websites generators. So I started experimenting with Jekyll and Hugo. Finally I opted for Hugo to develop my personal site (this site).
In summary, my first experience as a member of The Carpentries Latin America was very enriching. The project is still very promising. It worth it!