Scientists spend more and more time writing, maintaining, anddebugging software. While techniques for doing this efficiently haveevolved, only few scientists actually use them. As a result, insteadof doing their research, they spend far too much time writingdeficient code and reinventing the wheel. In this course we willpresent a selection of advanced programming techniques,incorporating theoretical lectures and practical exercises tailoredto the needs of a programming scientist. New skills will be testedin a real programming project: we will team up to develop anentertaining scientific computer game.We use the Python programming language for the entire course. Pythonworks as a simple programming language for beginners, but moreimportantly, it also works great in scientific simulations and dataanalysis. We show how clean language design, ease of extensibility,and the great wealth of open source libraries for scientificcomputing and data visualization are driving Python to become astandard tool for the programming scientist.This school is targeted at Master or PhD students and Post-docs fromall areas of science. Competence in Python or in another languagesuch as Java, C/C++, MATLAB, or Mathematica is absolutely required.Basic knowledge of Python is assumed. Participants without any priorexperience with Python should work through the proposed introductorymaterials before the course.Date and Location=================September 1—6, 2013. Zürich, Switzerland.Preliminary Program===================Day 0 (Sun Sept 1) — Best Programming Practices  - Best Practices, Development Methodologies and the Zen of Python  - Version control with git  - Object-oriented programming & design patternsDay 1 (Mon Sept 2) — Software Carpentry  - Test-driven development, unit testing & quality assurance  - Debugging, profiling and benchmarking techniques  - Best practices in data visualization  - Programming in teamsDay 2 (Tue Sept 3) — Scientific Tools for Python  - Advanced NumPy  - The Quest for Speed (intro): Interfacing to C with Cython  - Advanced Python I: idioms, useful built-in data structures, generatorsDay 3 (Wed Sept 4) — The Quest for Speed  - Writing parallel applications in Python  - Programming projectDay 4 (Thu Sept 5) — Efficient Memory Management  - When parallelization does not help:the starving CPUs problem  - Advanced Python II: decorators and context managers  - Programming projectDay 5 (Fri Sept 6) — Practical Software Development  - Programming project  - The Pelita TournamentEvery evening we will have the tutors' consultation hour : Tutors willanswer your questions and give suggestions for your own projects.Applications============You can apply on-line at http://python.g-node.orgApplications must be submitted before 23:59 CEST, May 1, 2013.Notifications of acceptance will be sent by June 1, 2013.No fee is charged but participants should take care of travel,living, and accommodation expenses.  Candidates will be selected onthe basis of their profile. Places are limited: acceptance rate isusually around 20%.  Prerequisites: You are supposed to know thebasics of Python to participate in the lectures. You are encouragedto go through the introductory material available on the website.Faculty=======  - Francesc Alted, Continuum Analytics Inc., USA  - Pietro Berkes, Enthought Inc., UK  - Valentin Haenel, freelance developer and consultant, Berlin, Germany  - Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek, Krasnow Institute,     George Mason University, USA  - Eilif Muller, Blue Brain Project, École Polytechnique Fédérale de    Lausanne, Switzerland  - Emanuele Olivetti, NeuroInformatics Laboratory, Fondazione Bruno    Kessler and University of Trento, Italy  - Rike-Benjamin Schuppner, Technologit GbR, Germany  - Bartosz Teleńczuk, Unité de Neurosciences Information et Complexité,    CNRS, France  - Stéfan van der Walt, Applied Mathematics, Stellenbosch University,    South Africa  - Bastian Venthur, Berlin Institute of Technology and Bernstein Focus    Neurotechnology, Germany  - Niko Wilbert, TNG Technology Consulting GmbH, Germany  - Tiziano Zito, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt-Universität    zu Berlin, GermanyOrganized by Nicola Chiapolini and colleagues of the Physik-Institut, University of Zurich, and by Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek and Tiziano Zito forthe German Neuroinformatics Node of the INCF.