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Good. * Rant mode: On Maybe in 30 years they will also learn a true programming language and stop producing undocumented, unusable, unportable, underdeveloped

by jiiam 10y ago

Good. * Rant mode: On Maybe in 30 years they will also learn a true programming language and stop producing undocumented, unusable, unportable, underdeveloped libraries for research level tools and technologies. Outside the world of Neural Network it is a complete disaster, and the NN landscape is at an acceptable level only because of big companies, surely not thanks to the researchers. And the reason, of course, is that most researchers refuse to think of themselves as "software developer" and use these arcane languages which might be good for prototyping but lack power when it comes to shipping a real product (which might also be a tool for other researchers to use). At least they're not using Matlab where everything breaks as soon as you change machine. * Rant mode: Off

noelsusman 10y ago
I mean, I won't argue against having better code and documentation, but it's not really our job to ship a real product. Shipping well documented, easily usable, ultra portable, well developed libraries takes a fuckload of time, resources, and expertise that we don't have. Our primary job is to ship ideas. It would be awesome if every project I did ended up with a nice, polished piece of software, but that's not what I get paid to do. I would be fired if I tried to do that.
- jiiam 10y ago
  Fair enough. But, speaking as a researcher, I often find myself reading through hundreds of lines of code and rebuilding routines from scratch in order to reproduce and expand on what others did in their works. However, I was very harsh, and of course I wouldn't find viable to expect production ready code, but something moderately portable could come handy. Of course, as you said, a researcher doesn't have the time to build a well developed library. As a solution, my University is considering the idea of hiring a dedicated developer whose job would be to maintain libraries. I really hope this to happen.

by jiiam 10y ago

noelsusman 10y ago

I mean, I won't argue against having better code and documentation, but it's not really our job to ship a real product. Shipping well documented, easily usable, ultra portable, well developed libraries takes a fuckload of time, resources, and expertise that we don't have. Our primary job is to ship ideas. It would be awesome if every project I did ended up with a nice, polished piece of software, but that's not what I get paid to do. I would be fired if I tried to do that.

jiiam 10y ago
Fair enough. But, speaking as a researcher, I often find myself reading through hundreds of lines of code and rebuilding routines from scratch in order to reproduce and expand on what others did in their works. However, I was very harsh, and of course I wouldn't find viable to expect production ready code, but something moderately portable could come handy. Of course, as you said, a researcher doesn't have the time to build a well developed library. As a solution, my University is considering the idea of hiring a dedicated developer whose job would be to maintain libraries. I really hope this to happen.