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Yeah, really. Graduate students aren't cheap! Oh wait, we pay computing grad students literally 1/10 of their potential salary ($10Ks vs $100Ks). Why could the

Yeah, really. Graduate students aren't cheap! Oh wait, we pay computing grad students literally 1/10 of their potential salary ($10Ks vs $100Ks). Why could there possibly be a shortage? -_- More importantly, it shouldn't be prohibitively expensive to port academic Python code.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Graduate students are there to do research, not update old existing codebases. That's a part of the bargain, part in parcel with the low pay.
- Kalium 6y ago
  From limited exposure, these codebases are often in truly awful shape. They've endured years or decades of having been hacked up just enough to finish someone's thesis or dissertation with no concern at all towards maintenance. It should be no surprise that such a poorly engineered process produces awful results.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- meekrohprocess 6y ago
  Sure, the low pay is commensurate with...uh...some sort of ephemeral opportunities in the future. But seriously, you're right. Grad students do grunt work, that's how it goes. And if an academic Python2 library is widely-used, porting it is important grunt work. Surely, no serious researcher would let an important tool rot, right?
  - zmb_ 6y ago
    The problem is that because of the way the incentives are set up, it is not important to anyone involved. What is important to the grad students is to produce research papers and to fulfill their mandatory obligations (teaching, project deliverables). And most grad students, even in CS, are not professional software developers anyway. Good luck convincing capable grad student candidates to join your group to do boring software maintenance for horrible pay and no job security. What is important to the professors, who decide what the grad students will work on, is again to produce research papers, fulfill their mandatory obligations (teaching, project deliverables) and to continually file for grants. Spending grad student time on porting and maintaining libraries does not help with that. In the worst case your grad student is spending their time maintaining a tool that a competing group's grad students are using to churn out papers, beating you to publications and grants. What is important for the funding agencies is flashy new research in the current hot topics. I never saw a funding agency that would even consider paying a grad student, let alone a full software engineer salary, to port an academic tool from Python2 to Python3 or do all the other maintenance you need to do on production codebases---nor do most universities even have salary classes and positions for that. As a result, in the many years I spent in academia, I saw many important research tools rot (both software and large hardware testbeds). The solution is not grad students, but to have fully paid software engineer positions in academia. But realistically that is not going to happen.
  - syntheticnature 6y ago
    I was getting a tour of a lab from a grad student, and I was told a desk was full of 3.5" floppies with data from old research. I said "Wait, what? Old floppies won't retain data indefinitely!" and got shushed -- she didn't want to wind up responsible for trying to do data recovery on hundreds of floppy disks, which would do jack for getting her to her Ph.D. Rot is a very big part of what happens to a lot of information.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Yeah, but would grad students come to write code all the time? The low pay is in exchange for the ability to do research, not to be a discount software engineer.
- meekrohprocess 6y ago
  Not all the time; to be fair, universities don't pay their students to work 40+hrs/week. But graduate schooling is still a big opportunity cost, and not to go all Mark Twain, but sometimes that can get in the way of your education.
  - valvar 6y ago
    They don't pay them to work 40+hrs/week, but often they expect them to work 50+hrs/week. From what I've seen in Sweden at least, but at least the pay is okay there.
    - meekrohprocess 6y ago
      Well in the US, postgrad education is a genuinely interesting proposition. * Very low pay. * Good benefits in a nation with poor safety nets. * Tuition waivers along the lines of $10-100K/year. * When the Dr. says jump, you ask how high. If you view education as an investment, it isn't necessarily bad compared to an ordinary job. But it's kind of like a FAANG company; your experience depends on who you report to.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

Graduate students are there to do research, not update old existing codebases. That's a part of the bargain, part in parcel with the low pay.

Kalium 6y ago
From limited exposure, these codebases are often in truly awful shape. They've endured years or decades of having been hacked up just enough to finish someone's thesis or dissertation with no concern at all towards maintenance. It should be no surprise that such a poorly engineered process produces awful results.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
meekrohprocess 6y ago
Sure, the low pay is commensurate with...uh...some sort of ephemeral opportunities in the future. But seriously, you're right. Grad students do grunt work, that's how it goes. And if an academic Python2 library is widely-used, porting it is important grunt work. Surely, no serious researcher would let an important tool rot, right?
- zmb_ 6y ago
  The problem is that because of the way the incentives are set up, it is not important to anyone involved. What is important to the grad students is to produce research papers and to fulfill their mandatory obligations (teaching, project deliverables). And most grad students, even in CS, are not professional software developers anyway. Good luck convincing capable grad student candidates to join your group to do boring software maintenance for horrible pay and no job security. What is important to the professors, who decide what the grad students will work on, is again to produce research papers, fulfill their mandatory obligations (teaching, project deliverables) and to continually file for grants. Spending grad student time on porting and maintaining libraries does not help with that. In the worst case your grad student is spending their time maintaining a tool that a competing group's grad students are using to churn out papers, beating you to publications and grants. What is important for the funding agencies is flashy new research in the current hot topics. I never saw a funding agency that would even consider paying a grad student, let alone a full software engineer salary, to port an academic tool from Python2 to Python3 or do all the other maintenance you need to do on production codebases---nor do most universities even have salary classes and positions for that. As a result, in the many years I spent in academia, I saw many important research tools rot (both software and large hardware testbeds). The solution is not grad students, but to have fully paid software engineer positions in academia. But realistically that is not going to happen.
- syntheticnature 6y ago
  I was getting a tour of a lab from a grad student, and I was told a desk was full of 3.5" floppies with data from old research. I said "Wait, what? Old floppies won't retain data indefinitely!" and got shushed -- she didn't want to wind up responsible for trying to do data recovery on hundreds of floppy disks, which would do jack for getting her to her Ph.D. Rot is a very big part of what happens to a lot of information.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Yeah, but would grad students come to write code all the time? The low pay is in exchange for the ability to do research, not to be a discount software engineer.

meekrohprocess 6y ago
Not all the time; to be fair, universities don't pay their students to work 40+hrs/week. But graduate schooling is still a big opportunity cost, and not to go all Mark Twain, but sometimes that can get in the way of your education.
- valvar 6y ago
  They don't pay them to work 40+hrs/week, but often they expect them to work 50+hrs/week. From what I've seen in Sweden at least, but at least the pay is okay there.
  - meekrohprocess 6y ago
    Well in the US, postgrad education is a genuinely interesting proposition. * Very low pay. * Good benefits in a nation with poor safety nets. * Tuition waivers along the lines of $10-100K/year. * When the Dr. says jump, you ask how high. If you view education as an investment, it isn't necessarily bad compared to an ordinary job. But it's kind of like a FAANG company; your experience depends on who you report to.