Physicist here. The lack of any formal training in most programs is a problem. In 2020 it's essentially impossible to do research without being able to write an

Physicist here. The lack of any formal training in most programs is a problem. In 2020 it's essentially impossible to do research without being able to write and maintain code, yet there are no real standards of knowledge for the dicipline as a whole. I dont know of any undergrad programs requiring physics majors to take even intro to cs. Most incoming grad students have never used version control, and probably about half of professors have never used it, let alone want to start using it. Larger collaborations tend to be more rigorous with coding practices because they have dedicated software engineers who enforce order and show people the way. Small groups with a few students and a professor are basically the wild west as far as writing software, and vary wildly. In practice most grad students get coding experience by working on projects, which is a great way to learn, but its rare for anyone to look at the code itself afterward if the results are sensible. I dont know of any small group with a formal code review process. I think we could make relatively inexpensive improvements in science by bringing in more dedicated software people who can educate others and help with the software engineering aspects. Its not unusual for a lab with half a dozen groups and 50+ scientists to have no software specialists, and 1 or 2 IT people whose responsibilities are purely infrastructure oriented.