"Our mission is to help scientists be more productive by teaching them
basic computing skills. Our approach combines short, intensive workshops
with self-paced online instruction. The benefits are more reliable
results and higher productivity: a day a week is common, and a ten-fold
improvement isn’t rare."
http://software-carpentry.org/
If you are writing tools to interact with Wikimedia data and software
for your research, and you aren't a very experienced programmer, these
videos and workshops can help you.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation