4 ms·

In grad school I had a friend that was doing olfactory (smell) research on rats with tetrode drives (wires in their brain). He was looking at the neuronal respo

In grad school I had a friend that was doing olfactory (smell) research on rats with tetrode drives (wires in their brain). He was looking at the neuronal response to smells that they gave the rats and had a few signals to match up. There was the signal from the arduino running the scent gates, the amps that reported the weak neuronal currents, the nose lasers that gated the ardunio, etc. He was having a hard time getting through all the data in his MatLab code and I offered to help for some beer. After the 11th nested 'if' statement, I upped the request to a case of beer. I'm not certain he ever got the code working. To the larger point, scientists are not programmers. They got into their programs to do research. What keeps them going is not the joy of programming, but the thrill of discovery. Programming is nothing but a means to an end. One they will do the bare minimum to get working. Asking hyper stressed out grad students to also become expert coders isn't reasonable. And yes, that means that the code is suspect at best. If you load the code on to another computer, make sure you can defenestrate that computer with ease, do not use your home device.

whatisthiseven 6y ago
I keep seeing this sentiment when it comes to those in the natural sciences, but it makes no sense. I could replace "programming" in your above little bit with "mathematics" and it would be just as weird. Our modern world runs on computers and programs, just as our modern world and modern science built itself on mathematics and required many to use it. So too the new world of science may require everyone to know to program just as they know about the chemical composition of smells, or the particulars of differential equations, etc. And I know your argument isn't "they shouldn't learn programming", but honestly since I keep seeing this same line of reasoning, I can't help but feel that is ultimately the real reasoning being espoused. Science is getting harder, and its requirements to competently "find the exciting things" raises the bar each time. I don't see this as a bad thing. To the contrary, it means we are getting to more and more interesting and in-depth discoveries that require more than one discipline and specialty, which ultimately means more cross-functional science that has larger and deeper impacts.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Tbh I think its a case for multidisciplinary research. You wouldn’t only hire one skill set to run a company, even a tech one, so why should research be any different? That’s probably where the deep insights are.
  - njarboe 6y ago
    People that are just decent programmers can make at least twice (probable 3 or 4 times) as much money working for industry than for science in an academic environment. Most programmers that would work for less money because they are interested in science will be more interested in computer programming problems than basic programming to support a scientist. NSF won't give you $250k to hire a really good programmer to support your gene analysis project. More like 100k if you are lucky. So what you end up with are that great scientists that are decent programmers are the ones who can do the cutting edge science at the moment.
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      That's a problem we should aim to solve.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Most scientists are not great at math either. Again: these are tools that are means to an end. They only need to work well enough to get the researcher to that end. A lot of what are considered essential practices by expert programmers are conventions centered around long-term productivity in programming. You can get a right answer out of a computer without following those conventions. Lots of people did back in the day before these conventions were created. That's not to say that everybody with horrible code is getting the right answers out of it. I'm sure many people are screwing up! My point is just that ugly code does not automatically produce wrong answers just because it is ugly. By analogy, I'm sure any carpenter would be horrified at how I built my kayak rack. But it's been holding up kayaks for 10 years and really, that's all it needs to do. I will add that in general, statistical analysis of data is not by itself adequate for scientific theory--no matter how sophisticated the software is. You need explanatory causal mechanisms as well, which are discovered by humans through experimentation and analysis. And you can do science very well with just the latter. Every grand scientific theory we have available to us today was created without good programming ability, or really the use of computers at all. Many were created using minimal math, for example evolution by natural selection, or plate tectonics. Even in physics, Einstein came up with relativity first, and only then went and learned the math to describe it.
meow1032 6y ago
> To the larger point, scientists are not programmers. They got into their programs to do research. I would say most research, to an ever growing degree, is so heavily dependent on software that it's tough to make that claim anymore. It makes no sense to me. It's like saying Zillow doesn't need software engineers because they are in the Real Estate business, not the software business.
- Balgair 6y ago
  I maybe misspoke. I meant that scientists do not go into science to program, they go into it to discover and do research (among many many other things). Sure, some do find joy in good programming, but that's not why they are there to begin with. Becoming a better programmer isn't their passion, and those skills remain underdeveloped as a result.
panda-giddiness 6y ago
> To the larger point, scientists are not programmers. I mean, sort of. Some research is essentially just programming; other research can get by with nothing but excel. Regardless, it's unreasonable to ask most scientists to be expert programmers -- most aren't building libraries that need to be maintained for years. If they do code, they're usually just writing one-shot programs to solve a single problem, and nobody else is likely to look at that code anyway.

whatisthiseven 6y ago

I keep seeing this sentiment when it comes to those in the natural sciences, but it makes no sense. I could replace "programming" in your above little bit with "mathematics" and it would be just as weird. Our modern world runs on computers and programs, just as our modern world and modern science built itself on mathematics and required many to use it. So too the new world of science may require everyone to know to program just as they know about the chemical composition of smells, or the particulars of differential equations, etc. And I know your argument isn't "they shouldn't learn programming", but honestly since I keep seeing this same line of reasoning, I can't help but feel that is ultimately the real reasoning being espoused. Science is getting harder, and its requirements to competently "find the exciting things" raises the bar each time. I don't see this as a bad thing. To the contrary, it means we are getting to more and more interesting and in-depth discoveries that require more than one discipline and specialty, which ultimately means more cross-functional science that has larger and deeper impacts.

rorykoehler 6y ago
Tbh I think its a case for multidisciplinary research. You wouldn’t only hire one skill set to run a company, even a tech one, so why should research be any different? That’s probably where the deep insights are.
- njarboe 6y ago
  People that are just decent programmers can make at least twice (probable 3 or 4 times) as much money working for industry than for science in an academic environment. Most programmers that would work for less money because they are interested in science will be more interested in computer programming problems than basic programming to support a scientist. NSF won't give you $250k to hire a really good programmer to support your gene analysis project. More like 100k if you are lucky. So what you end up with are that great scientists that are decent programmers are the ones who can do the cutting edge science at the moment.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    That's a problem we should aim to solve.
snowwrestler 6y ago
Most scientists are not great at math either. Again: these are tools that are means to an end. They only need to work well enough to get the researcher to that end. A lot of what are considered essential practices by expert programmers are conventions centered around long-term productivity in programming. You can get a right answer out of a computer without following those conventions. Lots of people did back in the day before these conventions were created. That's not to say that everybody with horrible code is getting the right answers out of it. I'm sure many people are screwing up! My point is just that ugly code does not automatically produce wrong answers just because it is ugly. By analogy, I'm sure any carpenter would be horrified at how I built my kayak rack. But it's been holding up kayaks for 10 years and really, that's all it needs to do. I will add that in general, statistical analysis of data is not by itself adequate for scientific theory--no matter how sophisticated the software is. You need explanatory causal mechanisms as well, which are discovered by humans through experimentation and analysis. And you can do science very well with just the latter. Every grand scientific theory we have available to us today was created without good programming ability, or really the use of computers at all. Many were created using minimal math, for example evolution by natural selection, or plate tectonics. Even in physics, Einstein came up with relativity first, and only then went and learned the math to describe it.

meow1032 6y ago

> To the larger point, scientists are not programmers. They got into their programs to do research. I would say most research, to an ever growing degree, is so heavily dependent on software that it's tough to make that claim anymore. It makes no sense to me. It's like saying Zillow doesn't need software engineers because they are in the Real Estate business, not the software business.

Balgair 6y ago
I maybe misspoke. I meant that scientists do not go into science to program, they go into it to discover and do research (among many many other things). Sure, some do find joy in good programming, but that's not why they are there to begin with. Becoming a better programmer isn't their passion, and those skills remain underdeveloped as a result.

panda-giddiness 6y ago

> To the larger point, scientists are not programmers. I mean, sort of. Some research is essentially just programming; other research can get by with nothing but excel. Regardless, it's unreasonable to ask most scientists to be expert programmers -- most aren't building libraries that need to be maintained for years. If they do code, they're usually just writing one-shot programs to solve a single problem, and nobody else is likely to look at that code anyway.