Week 2: Env Files and Secrets

Contents

Week 2: Env Files and Secrets#

Objectives#

  • No class on Jan 20 because of holiday. I will hold a make-up class on Friday, January 24 during the TA office hours. This will be on Zoom. See the Zoom link on the Canvas calendar. I will use the same Zoom link as the TA office hours.

  • Review HW 1:

    • Even with precise instructions, replicating results exactly is still hard.

    • The manual data download step is one common source of error. In today’s lecture, we’ll learn how to automate the data download step, which will go a long way towards fixing this problem.

    • The test-driven development workflow is common workflow in the real world. Learning how to write and debug unit tests is an important career skill.

    • Lots of other coding classes restrict your coding to a single windows in a browser, like LeetCode. This course gives you a more realistic context for writing code.

    • Getting used to incorporating Git and GitHub into your workflow is also an important career skill.

  • GitHub Skills portion of HW 1:

    • Review this section of the HW.

    • I will check this for completion. Everyone should make sure to complete these.

    • Learning GitHub is a core skill in this class. It is of upmost importance for an aspiring software developer or data scientist.

    • Future assignments will contain additional GitHub skill-building exercises. These tutorials created by GitHub are a great resource, but I will augment these with some of my own exercises.

  • Review “Virtual Environments” from Week 1

  • Given the motivation for automating data downloads and the inspiration to create various financial reports, let’s discuss the main platform for data that we’ll use in this course: WRDS.

  • Discuss .env files and secretes, and how to use them in our workflow. See Env Files

  • CRSP value weighted index example

  • Discuss HW 2

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