[philosophy/repo organisation] What is the point of the code samples in this repo

[KirstieJane]

Hey @choldgraf & @dorahermes (and anyone else who wants to chime in!)

@Park-Patrick and I are working together and we're looking through the repo and trying to make it super clear for new arrivals.

One question we have is "why do we want to share all these code snippets to help make json files" (in the matlabCode and pythonCode folders).

My guess on why they're there is to help people make json files from scratch.....but I wonder if either of you have some clearer answers.

Another question is where is best to add in this explanation. I'm guessing that a page on the wiki makes sense? With maybe a link from the README?

[choldgraf]

I chatted a bit with @CPernet and he thought it'd be great if we had JSON schemas with the latest version of the spec in this repo, and a lightweight amount of code that could generate empty JSON files from those (and other stuff too). maybe he has thoughts

[Remi-Gau]

Not sure if this helps but anecdotal evidence: I recently pointed a friend to this repo because she was getting acquainted with BIDS but was asking me "What the hell is a JSON file?". She is fluent in matlab and R (and python?) so the code snippets were exactly what she was looking for and was clearly a time saver for her.

[dorahermes]

Thanks @Remi-Gau I have had several other people give similar (anecdotal) comments.
I updated the wiki with links to the code snipets (which seem to require some additional organization)

[KirstieJane]

Thanks for updating @dorahermes!

@Remi-Gau - I had the EXACT same question as your friend when I started with BIDS!! There's this nice page in the wiki that tries to answer it ("What is a json file?") but I think we've learned from your friend's experience that she didn't find it easily.....do you have any thoughts about how to make that easier to find?

[Remi-Gau]

Well beyond the stuff already mentioned in the #74 around improving the 'Getting started' section of the main BIDs website and would redirect people here: I am not sure.
Adding an FAQ?

[KirstieJane]

FAQ added - I thought we already had one to be honest! Please update with any other questions you hear! https://github.com/bids-standard/bids-starter-kit/wiki/FAQ

[dorahermes]

+4 people over the last 2 weeks who have used the code samples

[dorahermes]

Can we close this issue?