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Sharing code is not always the answer Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? Sharing code is not the full answer, especially in case of Monte-Carlo
by YorkshireSeason 8y ago
Sharing code is not
always the answer
Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good?
Sharing code is not the full answer, especially in case of Monte-Carlo simulations in physics, because
that kind of algorithm is hard to test: What is the testing oracle?
What is the specification?
But sharing code is part of the answer.
Setting up a culture where it is unacceptable to submit a paper
without open-sourcing the code and suitable testing (for simple
edge ases), and suitable scripts that make reproducing the software
simulations easy, is good scientific 'hygiene'. See for example [1,
2] for efforts towards reproducible software submissions in computer
science.
Reproduciblility is the very essence of the scientific method.
[1] http://evaluate.inf.usi.ch/artifacts http://evaluate.inf.usi.ch/artifacts
[2] http://www.artifact-eval.org/ http://www.artifact-eval.org/