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Is it just me or does this seems to be very analogous to technical debt generally? The incentive structure definitely seems to lean more towards individuals or

Is it just me or does this seems to be very analogous to technical debt generally? The incentive structure definitely seems to lean more towards individuals or small teams working in the short-term (e.g. (publishable results) > (maintainability, reusability, extensibility)). All of which sounds like what happens with hackathons, first drafts of most anything, and excel; stuff needs to get done, and prior to refactoring/rewriting/codifying it's all over the place.

cs2818 11y ago
Yes, I'd agree. The most troubling part is that often our projects are multi-year grants, with each phase building on the prior, which truly merits the use of good software engineering techniques. However, as soon as the PI of the grant sees as much as a proof of concept piece of software, they want you to move to the next feature immediately. It places a high burden on the undergraduate and graduate students doing the actual development work.