hpc-intro icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
hpc-intro copied to clipboard

Need to define "job" in the intro

Open symulation opened this issue 7 years ago • 4 comments

Request from Kamil: early in the intro we should define what a "job" is. Otherwise it's jargon.

symulation avatar Apr 30 '18 22:04 symulation

+1 to this!!

ChristinaLK avatar May 01 '18 16:05 ChristinaLK

Jobs are first described in the "Scheduling Jobs" lesson, the first section of "Running a batch job" looks like a good place for this, or possibly in a separate subsection immediately preceding it.

reid-a avatar Jan 28 '21 12:01 reid-a

How about "job (a task that we want the computer to perform, usually a piece of code or program)"?

qiwang7 avatar May 19 '21 12:05 qiwang7

Hi @symulation, is this issue still open? I can't see any updates to the page but the content appears to still mirror that described by @reid-a in Jan 2021.

I think perhaps the definition needs to be introduced sooner since it's mentioned in objectives 3 and 4 but also immediately following this is the heading Job Scheduler! Perhaps after the first paragraph, "What is a job?" or similar can be defined. Technically, this is "a unit of work (or execution that performs said work), which a computer operator (or program = job scheduler) passes to an operating system" but this is somewhat verbose so, I think a helpful graphic (the usual boxes/arrows) would reinforce the idea.

Additionally, some wording in sentences 3 and 4 of the first paragraph might be confusing. Tasks (sentence 3) are technically part of the job (whether command line or scripting) and job (sentence 4) could be interpreted here as the actual job that we are passing to the scheduler or "thing that needs to be done". While we are familiar with these terms and usage, I could anticipate learners getting lost early on in what appears to be a very busy lesson.

rachelwiltshire avatar Apr 26 '22 19:04 rachelwiltshire