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2026🔗︎

Upcoming SEA Discussion: Confessions of a Vibe Coder

On March 11th at 10 AM MT, the UCAR SEA will host an open discussion in which we take an informal look at the potential and pitfalls of using LLMs as code contributors and collaborators. Ben Kirk, from NSF NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) will facilitate the discussion. Over the past few months, Ben has used the Claude LLM to tackle an unexpected challenge: modernizing the Systems Accounting Manager - the backbone of NSF NCAR’s HPC allocation accounting - becoming a relative subject matter expert in database programming in the process. Ben will describe his experiences using Claude and other LLMs, and then open up the floor to discussion. We hope you’ll join us and bring your own LLM coding anecdotes, observations, and questions.

To register for this open discussion and receive virtual meeting information, please fill out this form before the event.

ISS 2026 Block-rate Lodging Now Available

A quick addendum to yesterday's announcement - we are now able to offer our block-rate lodging for the 2026 Improving Scientific Software Conference.

As in prior years, the walking-distance Residence Inn Boulder is our partner hotel. The block rate is $109 per night and is available from Sunday, April 5 through Saturday, April 11, so you can extend your stay beyond the end of the conference (Thursday, April 9) if you wish to spend time exploring Boulder. The last day to book using the block rate is Sunday, March 8, 2026!

See our conference website for a link to the booking portal.

Register now to attend the 2026 Improving Scientific Software Conference!

Registration is now open for the 2026 Improving Scientific Software Conference. The ISS Conference, hosted by the UCAR Software Engineering Assembly, will be held April 6-9, 2026 in Boulder, CO with the theme of Maintaining the Joy of Software Development.

Join us either in person or virtually for our four day program (details coming soon!) featuring talks, tutorials, and keynote sessions on a range of scientific software topics. The deadline to register is March 20th, 2026 if you are attending in person, and April 3rd, 2026 for the virtual option. We will also offer block-rate hotel lodging at the walking-distance Residence Inn Boulder.

Visit our conference website for more information.

Tutorial and Discussion Recording: Fortran Unit Testing and pFUnit

For those of you that could not make last week's Fortran Unit Testing tutorial and discussion, we have posted a recording of the event to the SEA Youtube Channel. As always, discussion notes from the event have also been uploaded.

You can find links to all notes and recordings in our Open Discussions page. We're currently planning the next discussion for early March - stay tuned for an announcement (topic hint: using LLMs in coding)!

As always, if you would like to suggest a Discussion topic, or volunteer to lead a discussion, reach out to the SEA Steering Committee.

Introducing the UCAR SEA Virtual Coworking Room

While we live in an age of working from home and hybrid offices, people still often feel the need to work in a shared space with the opportunity for spontaneous collaboration and camaraderie.

If you are an NSF NCAR/UCAR/UCP employee, we invite you to hop into the UCAR SEA Virtual Coworking Room anytime. This room is a perpetually open Google Meet with no set agenda. Feel free to join and work independently until you wish to chat or simply drop by for a quick virtual watercooler conversation. This space is yours to use in any way you find productive.

Meet link for NSF NCAR/UCAR/UCP staff: UCAR SEA Virtual Coworking Room.

As for any collaborative space intended for employees, we expect all who make use of the Coworking Room to abide by the UCAR Code of Conduct.

ISS 2026 Abstract Deadline is Now January 30th

The deadline is fast approaching to submit abstracts to the 2026 Improving Scientific Software Conference. The ISS Conference will be held April 6-10, 2026 in Boulder, CO with the theme of Maintaining the Joy of Software Development.

To give submitters a bit of extra time, we are extending the abstract submission deadline by one week to Friday January 30th, 2026 at 5 PM MT. We welcome anyone with an interest in improving scientific software design, quality, development, deployment, and support to submit an abstract for a talk, tutorial session, or panel. Student travel and registration support is available and submitters can also choose to participate in a conference proceeding.

We have also decided to move ISS 2026 from the previously announced NSF NCAR Mesa Lab location to our traditional home at the Center Green Campus. Due to facilities construction timeline changes, this venue is once again available to us and offers easier logistics for conference attendees. The conference will be hybrid, so virtual presentations are also welcome.

You may submit an abstract here and visit our conference website for more information.

Upcoming SEA Tutorial and Discussion: Fortran Unit Testing and pFUnit

Join the UCAR Software Engineering Assembly (SEA) at 2 pm on February 12th for a tutorial and open discussion on unit testing Fortran code with pFUnit, a Fortran testing framework developed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for testing high-performance Fortran libraries. In this session, NSF NCAR software engineer Andy Stokely will highlight how pFUnit simplifies the process of writing tests and lowers the barrier to adopting thorough testing practices in Fortran codebases. The session will begin with a tutorial demonstrating how pFUnit can be used to develop a Fortran library using Test-Driven Development (TDD).

Following the tutorial, the discussion will expand to examine the role of unit testing in scientific and high-performance Fortran development, including how testing can improve code quality, support long-term maintainability, and enable safer refactoring as requirements evolve. The conversation will also focus on how testing can facilitate more effective collaboration between software engineers and scientists. Participants are encouraged to share experiences, challenges, and perspectives related to adopting testing practices in scientific software projects.

Discussion topics will include:

  • Applying Test-Driven Development to Fortran libraries
  • Using unit tests to define expected behavior and verify correctness
  • How testing supports maintainability and safe refactoring
  • Ways unit testing can improve collaboration between scientists and software engineers

All are welcome, regardless of prior experience with pFUnit or unit testing. If you are UCAR/NCAR staff, please use this link to add the event to your Google Calendar. If you are not staff but would like to attend, email the SEA Committee for an invite link.