3 ms·

Except that it wouldn't speed things up at all. Academia writes run-once code, which changes spec fourteen times in one week. Their use case is orthogonal to in

• diegolo 6y ago
  Lol I spent 5 years in academia, and I have a PhD in CS - I know what I'm talking about. Specs of code change in academia as in industry, I was able to write unit tests and document my code also in academia. And I know in medicine and chemistry time to publish are much longer - but that is not connected with the fact that they know how to properly use a microscope, clean the lab, and keep an inventory. If you don't write unit tests how do you hedge the possibility of having bugs in your code?
  • neltnerb 6y ago
    Most scientists have no training in computer science, much less engineering, but still need to do it sometimes to build experiments. They've largely taught themselves. You are not the norm. I've taught dozens of grad students enough programming to get the job done and it would have been a total waste of time to make the code that robust. They need experimental results next week, with only one computer ever expected to run the code, not a product demo. The software isn't their research project, it's a nuisance that they have to deal with. Accordingly they neither want to nor have time to do it perfectly. I cannot blame them. That said, there should be a system to encourage actual trained programmers to get involved, including coauthorship and consideration in tenure decisions. The current system is bad, I'm just saying it's not the scientists fault here. This is just literally not their domain of interest or expertise, and I would rather they focus on the thing they're uniquely good at.
    • diegolo 6y ago
      I agree - the message I wanted to communicate is the same :) I never thought the problem are the scientists ;)
• dekhn 6y ago
  The authors of HMMER know what they are doing. That's an extremely rare situation.