John Carmack replies https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1258192136744456199 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1258192136744456199: > It is disappo

John Carmack replies https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1258192136744456199 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1258192136744456199: > It is disappointing, but not really unexpected, to see this take on the epidemic simulation code release: https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/ https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/ If we accept it at face value, we have a retired software engineer making the case that non-determinism in a simulation shows incompetence. I am all for deterministic-everything, but issues with random seeds and parallel floating point reductions are extremely widespread, and a great deal of science gets done with non-deterministic simulations. Heck, professional software engineering struggles mightily with just making completely reproducable builds. I take no position on the mechanics of the simulation or the conclusions drawn from the runs, but implicitly encouraging scientists to keep their code secret if it isn't "perfect" is damaging. Also later: > There was a continuous integration regression test running a small model in single threaded mode on every check in, comparing for exact accuracy, at least when I was working on it -- I haven't pulled the public release. For background, he was pulled in to do a bit of work on the simulation code a month or two ago.