Review the manual for 2025

[leouieda]

Recently came across this paper about lab handbooks and it would be good to review our manual first thing next year to make sure we’re following most of the recommendations. We should also add a mission statement to the start of the manual.

[santisoler]

I like the idea! Thanks @leouieda for sharing this paper.

I have one comment on this. That paper states that:

a lab handbook is not like a technical manual that explains, for example, how to perform a certain experiment or to use computing resources (although such manuals are also valuable).

So maybe we could split this document in two: a handbook with most of it, and create a technical manual for computer setup and link to resources.

I also see that the handbook might have a pace of change much slower than the technical manual. Things change in the Python ecosystem (setup.py -> setup.cfg -> pyproject.toml for example), and "standard tools" also change (I started my PhD with pylint, we use flake8 now and I'm exploring to move to ruff). So, keeping them two in separate documents would make the technical manual more prone to get more content or get updated.