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I think that's a bit unfair to label all scientists like that. There are many of us that care about writing good code and working in version control. You just n
by xioxox 11y ago
I think that's a bit unfair to label all scientists like that. There are many of us that care about writing good code and working in version control. You just need to browse github to see many such people. There's not much incentive to actually do this in an academic environment, however, other than improving their own ability to improve and maintain their own codes. A well documented code available for everyone is usually well down the list of most scientist's priorities, for understandable reasons when you must publish papers.
Although I have quite complex programs I have written, which do benefit from software engineering methodologies, most of what I write are single-use scripts to automate tasks or try out ideas. These definitely aren't for public consumption and shouldn't be - they're more extensions of the thinking process than products of the research.
- Vraxx 11y agoAll generalities are unfair to some extent, it's just how generalities work, so I tend to read them as a quantified statement based on the number of people in the group that the person making the statement is likely to have interacted with. In this case, it seems as if the poster works with scientists on a regular basis, and that is his experience with those he has worked with. That being said, I'll pile on some of my own anecdata in just saying that in school I was split between physics and computer science and my initial approaches towards software development were certainly influenced by some of the thought patterns that the poster was expressing. I've come around on a lot of things, but software developers definitely have a different mindset about software because we develop it. Yes, I'm also aware that I made a general statement about generalities, though I think this one is a mostly correct generality.