4 ms·

Why is it that as soon as you talk about software in science, the term "codes" gets used when all software-industry people would say "code" or "programs"? Exam

• dalke 11y ago
  Is it the use of "code" instead of "program", or the use of code as a countable noun rather than uncountable which you find jarring? The author is a native Spanish speaker, and I've seen fluent but non-native speakers of English make similar confusions concerning other mass nouns and irregular plurals. So could you be more specific by pointing to how a native English speaker uses it in a scientific software context?
  • dalke 11y ago
    Methology: I did a search of http://arxiv.org/find/hep-ex/1/abs:+codes/0/1/0/all/0/1?query_id=d5fca86498d3f01c&form=yes http://arxiv.org/find/hep-ex/1/abs:+codes/0/1/0/all/0/1?quer... for "codes" in hep-ex entries at arXiv.org and reported the first few papers which actually contained "codes". (It appears that stemming is in place, as some papers only had 'code'.) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.08141.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.08141.pdf - "The processes are simulated with the pythia and MadGraph 5 Monte Carlo codes" (authors are from Brazil and Switzerland) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.04063.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.04063.pdf - "They present new challenges to the simulation codes" (author is from Germany) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.00209.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.00209.pdf - "The codes and setups used for the formulation of these plots are listed below:" (from Italy) (Note the 'and setups'. This is a clear mistake made by a non-native speaker.) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.00589.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.00589.pdf - "The Cambridge variable MT2 can already be reliably computed with one of several publicly available codes" (3 of the 8 authors have a US address, though only one of those three is a common name for a native English speaker) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.08764.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.08764.pdf - "a benchmark for the hadronic interaction Monte Carlo simulations codes" (1 of the 10 authors has a US address. That author has a typically English name) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.06706.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.06706.pdf - "Both codes are available at" (1 US-based author of 5). I then repeated the same search with 'programs': http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.00391.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.00391.pdf - "Using a fully automated framework based on the FeynRules and MadGraph5.aMC@NLO programs" (1 UK-based author of 5) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.01918.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.01918.pdf - "The results are compared with the values used in the simulation programs GEANT4 and UNIMOD." (All authors are based in Russia.) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.05895.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.05895.pdf - "various high-energy physics programs such as Monte Carlo event generators." (1 UK based author of 6) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.00556.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.00556.pdf - "This requires an interface between the higher-order theory programs and the fast interpolation frameworks" (23 authors, 18 institutions, and 10 institutions in English speaking countries) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.08759.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.08759.pdf - "The new estimates presented here are based both on simulation programs (GEANT4 libraries) and theoretical calculations" (Authors are from Italy.) http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.06469.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.06469.pdf - "While many fixed-order and parton shower programs allow" (4 authors, 2 based in English speaking countries, one with a common name for a British person) This is surely not proof of anything, but it does demonstrate that 1) "codes" is use in scientific computing (though it doesn't show the ratio between "codes" vs. "programs" nor its use in fields other than experimental HEP), 2) there's a suggestion that non-native speakers use "codes" more often, but it's not clear at this level, and 3) there are a lot of non-native speakers pushing papers, while I think the 'software-industry people' who publish in English has a much stronger bias towards native English speaking people. A more thorough analysis would also need to see if the modern scientific sense is historically consistent; perhaps the industry use is newer though wider coinage.
  • unwind 11y ago
    I think it's both. But of course, I'm not a native English speaker.
• mitchty 11y ago
  I work at a supercomputer company, they've always referred to it thusly as codes. Consider it the same as humor versus humour in computing and don't read too much into it. It comes from a lot earlier time from what I can gather, probably the 60's or even earlier where codes were run on mainframes.
• j2kun 11y ago
  I saw this prevalently used in the supercomputing industry, and at big government labs. I also think it's bizarre :) I don't think it's typical of the scientific community as a whole (certainly not in, say, math), but I don't often interact with computational biologists and such.
• jordigh 11y ago
  > Is it just me, or is this usage very typical of the scientific community? It is a well-established tradition in scientific programming to use "code" as a count noun. It's even acknowledged in the Jargon file: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/code.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/code.html I find it jarring too, despite being a scientific programmer myself, but you learn to go with it. It is a tradition that this linguistic community has established, and there's no reason to rail against it.