3 ms·
Nah. The fundamental problem is that scientific code is produced by entry-level developers: 1. Paid below-market wages 2. With no way to move up in the organ
by neutronicus 6y ago
Nah.
The fundamental problem is that scientific code is produced by entry-level developers:
1. Paid below-market wages
2. With no way to move up in the organization
3. With lots of non-software responsibilities
4. With an expectation of leaving the organization in six years
As long as the grunt work of science is done by overworked junior scientists whose careers get thrown to the wolves no matter what they do, you're not going to get maintainable code out of it.
- throwanem 6y agoI mean, senior researchers in stable roles don't really do any better. Just to pick the first example off the top of my head - one of the investigators I worked with, during my year as a staff member of an academic institution most of a decade ago, is also one of my oldest friends; he's been a researcher there for what must be well past ten years by now. Despite one of his undergrad degrees being actually in CS, I still find ample reason whenever I see it to give him a hard time about the maintainability of his code. Like I said before, it's a field in which people really just don't give a damn about engineering. Which is fair! There's little reason why they should, as far as I've ever been able to see.
- jnxx 6y agoEven more fundamental is that there is no maintenance budget for important scientific libraries and tools. Somebody wrote them as part of their job, and the person who wrote it, is now working somewhere else.