Professional programmers make fun of research code but actually the dirty way is desirable considering that research is about prototyping, tweaking, and in smal

Professional programmers make fun of research code but actually the dirty way is desirable considering that research is about prototyping, tweaking, and in small groups. Until say a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic comes along and facing the prospect of literally millions of people dying governments turn to those researchers for advice. Then suddenly some program that is thousands of lines long in a single file and reads like an entry to the IOCCC that has evolved over many years with no real peer review or test strategy or anything resembling formal verification to implement the researcher's calculations becomes the foundation for major public policy decisions that can profoundly affect the way of life of entire societies for years. At least we all know that hacky code written by non-expert programmers without any tests, review or other verification never has bugs that could cause it to output incorrect results. Code written by academics in "research" style is fine when the results are only of academic interest but it's insanely dangerous to apply the same low standards if the results are going to be used for something that actually matters.