I work with a bunch of scientists and engineers(the non software type) I've seen some very 'ugly' code written by very smart people who they were never taught C

I work with a bunch of scientists and engineers(the non software type) I've seen some very 'ugly' code written by very smart people who they were never taught CS concepts so they often don't know about efficient algorithms or anything like that but they crank out tonnes of code that does useful work. I kind of fall into this janitor role. I often get people stopping by my desk how can I speed this up. Can you help me fix this bug etc. I think it's because I fall into the sweet spot where I have the domain knowledge (I have engineering degree) so that I can understand the problem they are trying to solve. It's also amusing that no matter the language (C, C++, Java, Basic etc) a large subset churn out code that looks a lot like Fortran 77.