Projects

Sometimes you may just need a one-off script to perform a task, but in general, we believe it is more robust to work in terms of projects.

A coding project lives in a single directory. You may have several smaller projects that are part of a larger overarching goal, but each smaller project should have an easily-articulated focus.

We suggest the following best practices when developing a coding project, which are also roughly in the order that you’d want to start doing them for a new project:

1. Use a version-controlled repository to house your project
2. Maintain a project-specific README
3. Use virtual environments to improve reproducibility
4. Use consistent project organisation and code style
5. Set up pipelines for complex and/or routine analyses