2025_09_24.html

---
layout: talk
title: "Teaching workflow systems to new users: why is it so hard?"
subtitle: "Workflow systems as mirrors of computing complexity"
authors: C. Titus Brown (UC Davis)
event_date: September 24, 2025
times: 11:00-12:00 PST / 14:00-15:00 EST / 20:00-21:00 CEST
talk_number: 6
speakers: [titus_brown]
given: true
image: /images/talks/titus-banner.png
presentation: /files/talks/20250924-Titus.pdf
video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ARq04oTm9Yg?si=IpUGVRMMCLlvdtAC
---

I’ll discuss the challenges (and opportunities!) of teaching workflow systems to
scientists, and present two concepts that I have found useful for guiding my
teaching: (1) workflow systems as imperfect mirrors of practical computing, and
(2) the Kernighan method for assessing lesson difficulty.

<div style="font-size: 0.8em; color: #666;">
{{ "Titus blogs regularly on these topics at
[ivory.idyll.org/blog/](https://ivory.idyll.org/blog/).
He has been teaching
and training snakemake workflow development for a while and has a draft
(incomplete) book introducing snakemake here:
[https://ngs-docs.github.io/2023-snakemake-book-draft/](https://ngs-docs.github.io/2023-snakemake-book-draft/) - feel free
to share! 
All of his software is open source at [github.com/dib-lab/](https://github.com/dib-lab/), 
and I am on Bluesky at [@titus.idyll.org](https://bsky.app/profile/titus.idyll.org)." | markdownify }}
</div>