The DRI's core sessions teach four flexible skills that provide a foundation for more specialized learning later in the week. Each of these tools can be applied broadly to answer a wide variety of research questions, and also serves as a prerequisite or gateway for learning a wider set of skills. The command line, for example, can be used by itself to automate common workflows or interactively explore data sets, but is primarily used to interact with other tools or set up a programming environment. The four fundamental skills taught in the first half of the week are:
- the command line, a text-based, automatable interface to the computer
- Git, a tool for managing, backing up, and collaborating on files, especially text
- Python - a multipurpose programming language widely used in the academy
- SQL/databases - tools for quickly storing and retrieving data