Awesome Thesis

A curated list of practical tips and tricks to help you achieve an awesome CS master thesis.

☆=(ゝ･ω･)/

Contents

• Workflows
  • Research Ideas
  • Meetings
  • Searching
    • Searching techniques
    • Searching through academic material
  • Tools
• Artifacts
  • Code
    • Searching for code
  • Data
    • Designing a dataset
    • Obtainig a dataset
• Experiments
  • Designing experiments
  • Running experiments
  • Benchmarking
• Writing
  • Scientific writing
  • Writer's block
  • Spell-check
  • Latex
  • Graphics
  • Books
• Defending your thesis
  • Slide-deck
  • Presentation
• Mental health
• Women in STEM
• Tools
  • Workflows
    • File Versioning
  • Artifacts
    • File Sharing
    • Backups
  • Experiments
    • Remote Control
  • Writing
    • Bibliography Management
    • Searching and indexing code
• Yet unsorted but awesome
• Acknowledgements
• Contribute

Workflows

Workflows and tips to help you manage your thesis like a pro.

• Applying Agile Methodologies to Design and Programming - you can apply agile methodologies to many things ;)

Research Ideas

• How to come up with new research ideas

Meetings

Keep notes during meetings, and keep files organized and shareable.

• Effective Meeting Minutes

Searching

Searching for information can be a daunting task.

Searching techniques

• google dorks - dorking, is a powerful technique to query search engines
• +Fravia's search lores - information is outdated, but still a valuable resource for searchers to understand the web
  • Feed the search engines with synonyms - "broaden your search results by using synonyms for words you are unsure about"
  • The weird ways of searching and the weird findings - explore the web differently

Searching through academic material

• Google scholar - your first place to go when looking for papers and patents Stand on the shoulders of giants
• How to read a paper - powerful tips to understand papers, and save time.
• Efficient reading of papers in science and technology

Tools

• Concept, mind, and argument mapping - different kinds of mind-mapping explained

Artifacts

With great artifacts comes a great thesis, put a readme in every directory, and keep it tidy and understandable to others!

Code

Making experiments easily replayable might be of help to your advisors to crack problems with you, keep code and docs tidy.

• coding conventions - keep your code consistent and readable
• documentation - document where you can :)
  • how to document your code responsibly -

Searching for code

• advanced searching on github - powerful search tools
• http://www.pudn.com - huge database of code (pay or contribute to download ...but just knowing the file names inside a package might help searching ;)

Data

Designing a dataset

Obtainig a dataset

• Scraping techniques
  • Beginner guide with Beautiful SOUP - Beautiful Soup is a python library for pulling data out of HTML and XML files
  • Selenium with Python - Selenium with Python libary allows your script to interact with the website

Experiments

Be proactive, carefully pick your next steps, don't be afraid of proposing and defending different solutions.

Designing experiments

Running experiments

• AWS - you can use an amazon micro instance for free for 1 year ;)

Benchmarking

Running benchmarks is a delicate part of your thesis, these resources will help you

• Benchmarking Crimes - This paper explores oversights in benchmarking

Writing

Scientific writing

• Harvard College Writing Center Writing Resources
• PrettyWrite - Practical Thesis-writing Guidelines for Master Students
• How to write a research paper - these awesome tips also apply to your thesis

Writer's block

Spell-check

• Chrisper
• Academic Writing Check
• aspell
• Grammarly

Latex

• Latex
• CS PhD dissertation latex template
• Latex Tutorial

Graphics

Use high resolution scalar images (PNG), or vectorial formats (SVG/PDF) for images included in your thesis.

• Tikz
• draw.io - When Tikz doesn't work out, draw.io might save you
• The Noun Project- Icons for everything with permissive licenses

Books

• BUGS in Writing - debug your writing skills

Defending your thesis

• The best thesis defense is a good thesis offense
• How to give a talk
• How to prepare a talk

Slide-deck

• How to avoid death by PowerPoint
• Life after death by PowerPoint

Presentation

Almost there! がんばって!

• Presentation Advices

Mental health

Student mental health resources.

• Awesome mental health - curated list of resources

Women in STEM

• BU CS resources - Women in Computer Science - useful resources for women in STEM.

Tools

Workflows

• Trello - A web-based kanban-like project management application.

File Versioning

• The Git Book - the git book
• Github Cheat Sheet - A list of cool features of Git and GitHub

Artifacts

File Sharing

• Dropbox - Dropbox is a modern workspace designed to reduce busywork – so you can focus on the things that matter.
• Google Drive - Cloud Storage & File Backup for Photos, Docs & More
• Nextcloud - Open source cloud and collaboration platform based on ownCloud
• ownCloud - ownCloud is the largest Open Source Content Collaboration Platform in the world

Backups

[TBD]

Experiments

Remote Control

Check out your long running experiments

• Chrome Remote Desktop - a nice remote desktop software tool with multiplatform support (09/2018, Running on Ubuntu require some fiddling)

Writing

Bibliography Management

• Zotero - Your personal research assistant
• Mendeley - Easy referencing
• JabRef - JabRef is an open source bibliography reference manager
• Papis - A Python based command line manager

Searching and indexing code

• Elixir - a lightweight source referencer for C/C++ projects
• OpenGrok - source code/cross referencing engine
• silversearcher-ag - ditch your grep, silversearcher is a blazing fast code searching tool
• cscope - tool for browsing C source code
• ctags - generate tag files for different programming languages

Yet unsorted but awesome

• Survival Skills for Graduate School and Beyond -

Acknowledgements

The content of this document is inspired by awesome people, go check them out.

Contribute

Contributions welcome! Read the contribution guidelines first.