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Such an odd attitude. There’s no way it takes 5-10x engineering effort to write some tests for components of a one-shot python script, as most scientific code i
by woah 6y ago
Such an odd attitude. There’s no way it takes 5-10x engineering effort to write some tests for components of a one-shot python script, as most scientific code is. It’s maybe the easiest type of software to test. Would this type of attitude fly for anything else? Can you imagine if chemists worked like this?
“Yea most chemists don’t like to release their procedures, since taking the trouble of accurately measuring out reagents could be 5-10x the effort and grant money is tight. Plus sometimes they don’t want to go all the way to the cabinet to grab a beaker so they just do the reaction in a coffee mug. The truth is that sometimes the procedure is just too ugly to release. And if they come out of the lab with a new chemical, what does it matter?”
- mennis16 6y agoI mean a lot of biology papers are loose on protocol details to be honest, dunno about Chemistry but for Bio it can often be difficult to exactly replicate a method because of lack of details alone. That said I think this should change given how easy it is these days to share supplemental info online. As far as ugly code I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of academics won't take the time to fix it up, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be released IMO. Maybe an open source community would pop up that could help clean this code for them.