Current title is much broader than the content of the lesson

[mahermanns]

As part of a discussion in the HPC Carpentry Community Meet-up at deRSE'26, it was mentioned that the current title "Intro to HPC" is very broad and missing information that one might initially expect.

Furthermore, during a discussion in the HPCC community meeting on April 2, 2026, we discussed whether this would also require a change to the lesson slug hpc-intro.

We initially drafted a new name, which will we can and should discuss as part of the PR to address this issue.

[tkphd]

Conversation first, please. Changing the name of an established lesson is not trivial: per our governance documents, there is a procedure for this. Please edit or make a new issue with your proposed name specified, and explain – either in the issue or at our next meeting – your reasoning.

[mahermanns]

@tkphd Sorry if I didn't follow procedure with this. Found "Martha's Rules" now and will read up.

FWIW, I created the issue specifically to have a conversation first. 😉

The PR exists to show which changes would be needed. Thanks for setting this to draft. I will set my PRs to draft right from the start in the future to make sure we don't accidentally merge those.

[reid-a]

I may have also caused confusion, I read this line:

...we can and should discuss as part of the PR to address this issue.

... as meaning that the intent was for the conversation to take place on the PR thread rather than the issue thread. I have a comment there summarizing (my impression of the) pros and cons of the move.

[tobyhodges]

Chiming in to reiterate my thoughts on this:

• Lesson titles with verbs are generally better: they are more specific, and they help learners more quickly identify whether or not the lesson is the right fit for them.
• I would expect the adjustment to create only minimal confusion, especially if we choose a new title that fits well with current users' perceptions of what the lesson teaches.
• A new title that reduces/removes the need for visitors to already know what we mean by HPC will be helpful.
• We can all keep referring to the lesson as "hpc intro", since we won't change the repo name/lesson URL 😀

[tkphd]

I am on board with renaming our lessons, and possibly even with the proposed change.

Summary

1. Notes from the deRSE meeting don't capture much detail:

   • hpc-intro does not include a definition of HPC – we should change this!
   • for the purposes of the core workshop, HPC is “a distributed compute system with a scheduler”
   • we should also discuss changing the title, e.g. “Using HPC Systems”

2. @tobyhodges' advice to use verbs in titles is well-received.

3. The proposed title is "Using High-Performance Computing Systems".

4. The current title for this lesson is "Introduction to High-Performance Computing".
   It was a great fit early on, when the audience and scope for the lesson were evolving. It is now much more definitely a lesson for cluster workload manager novices. The title should reflect the clarified scope.

5. The stub shall remain hpc-intro

Thoughts

I have questions about how this change would fit with the lesson program as a whole.

1. What do we want the revised title to capture, express, or highlight in terms of the lesson content and the level of its presentation to users? Does the proposed title effectively convey what we need it to?
2. How does the syntax of the revised title compare to our other lessons, and can we thematically rename everything to present a consistent aesthetic?
3. Our core workshop is also called "Introduction to High-Performance Computing". Might we use the proposed title for the whole workshop, rather than this lesson?
   • "HPC" needn't stay in the lesson titles
   • The workshop title could stay the same, with lessons renamed within that context
4. What alternative lesson titles might we consider, and put up for a vote? A handful of ideas:
   • "Using High-Performance Computing Systems" (this proposal)
   • "Using a Computer Cluster" (agnostic of performance)
   • "Working in a Cluster Computing Environment"
   • "Navigating High-Performance Computing Systems"
5. How do the proposed titles "fit" with naming conventions in the other Lesson Programs?
6. When we change the name in this repository, where else do we need to substitute the new title?

All of which is to say, I support changing the name of this lesson exactly once, so we had better get it right.