  In this chapter we first outline some of the popular computing environments
used for analysing neural data, followed by a brief discussion of 'software
carpentry', basic tools and skills from software engineering that can be of
great use to computational scientists. We then introduce the concept of
open-source software and explain some of its potential benefits for the
academic community before giving a brief directory of some freely available
open source software packages that address various aspects of the study of
neural codes. While there are many commercial offerings that provide similar
functionality, we concentrate here on open source packages, which in addition
to being available free of charge, also have the source code available for
study and modification.
