4 ms·
You have a remarkably rosy view of grad students and their relationship to software. All it has to do is produce output (I hesitate to say work) one time, on o
by sevensor 9y ago
You have a remarkably rosy view of grad students and their relationship to software. All it has to do is produce output (I hesitate to say work) one time, on one computer, under some conditions that may never be documented, let alone reproduced. This is doubly true if the code just a step in the analysis chain and not the actual subject of the research.
- opportune 9y agoIn this case, the software itself was the focus of the research. And this grad student still works at a very prestigious university for CS. I've worked in academia (as a research assistant) before so I'm familiar with shitty grad student software. But going to the effort to document and present on the software without making sure it even worked? That seemed excessively stupid to me.
- sevensor 9y agoThat's dismaying -- not at all surprising, unfortunately, but I understand your frustration. The upside-down incentives in the academic world are such that even somebody who ought to know better fails to produce useable software because there's no payoff. Actually, it's worse than that -- producing software other people can use means you might be giving a leg up to the competition, so there's an incetive to produce software that appears to work but is in fact useless.
- iak8god 9y ago> still works at a very prestigious university for CS > document and present on the software without making sure it even worked? That seemed excessively stupid to me It sounds like that individual is responding rationally to the incentive structure he's embedded in, and succeeding as a result.