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My understanding is that within the scientific/academic community that taking time to write good code is considered to be a black mark as you are "wasting time"
by SeanDav 9y ago
My understanding is that within the scientific/academic community that taking time to write good code is considered to be a black mark as you are "wasting time" which could be better spent on your main project.
So writing bad code every day, means you are serious about your main line of work!
Can't say I agree with this sentiment, but it is slowly changing.
- amelius 9y agoOne problem is that to measure a scientist's output, one typically uses their citation count, and people tend to not cite software (there are exceptions), and software based on other software does not transitively pass on those citations.
- carbocation 9y ago5 of the top 10 most highly cited articles of the past 5 years in biomedicine are software programs: https://pubrank.carbocation.com/article?y=2012 https://pubrank.carbocation.com/article?y=2012 And if you go back 10 years, 9 of the top 10 articles are software programs: https://pubrank.carbocation.com/article?y=2007 https://pubrank.carbocation.com/article?y=2007
- theophrastus 9y agoI can personally attest to this point of view. My degree is in protein structure, specifically x-ray crystallography, and there were more than a few professors in our department who would specifically deride any post-doc/senior-fellow who "got lost in the technology". By which they meant focusing on writing software instead of writing publications/grants. At that level it's a brutal time/return calculation, like allowing a long trained neurosurgeon to do any of their own paper work. Far more profitable to have them constantly in surgery. So it was: "fix that three lines of FORTRAN to change the output for 'table #17' and get back to the bench!" (egads i saw some horrific code)