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You're basically saying scientists can become good programmers if they become professional programmers. Of course they can be, and I doubt anyone would argue t
by sbov 7y ago
You're basically saying scientists can become good programmers if they become professional programmers. Of course they can be, and I doubt anyone would argue that. Some of the best programmers I know have zero college education at all, so of course it's possible for mathematicians and scientists to do the same.
But that isn't anywhere near the point of the article. It's talking about scientists that did NOT switch to writing software professionally, but continue to write it merely as a tool to accomplish their primary scientific goals.
- FpUser 7y ago"...It's talking about scientists that did NOT switch to writing software as a product, but as merely a way to accomplish their primary scientific goals. ..." Sure, for this they would do what is just enough to solve their specific problem. Just as ANY sound business would do.
- kingbirdy 7y agoBut the point of the article is that this isn't sustainable. If the person who wrote it leaves, or if they need to do a similar task later, or another lab is doing similar work, all the effort will be repeated. It would make a lot more sense for the community to invest in more open source tools that generalize to cover more research domains.