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I'm a scientist, and a programmer, but I don't code in Fortran. I've noticed a "brain drain" of programmers out of science and traditional engineering (mechanic

I'm a scientist, and a programmer, but I don't code in Fortran. I've noticed a "brain drain" of programmers out of science and traditional engineering (mechanical, electrical, etc), simply due to the disparities in pay and mobility. Anybody who's good enough at coding to do it for money is at risk of bailing out of science altogether. The best way to convince someone to learn SW practices is by giving them the hope of finding a better paying job. I think there's actually a shortage of good training for scientific programmers, which probably has to come from people who are immersed in it. On the other hand, is the grass really greener on the other side? One can read plenty of blogs and forum posts from programmers on the commercial side, complaining about the quality of code and coding practices, that they have to work on. I've read about banks running on COBOL and hacked together Excel workbooks.

lapinot 4y ago
> Anybody who's good enough at coding to do it for money is at risk of bailing out of science altogether. No. Tons of people in academia are in academia because they believe in free knowledge and because they want to work as public servants outside the realm of for-profit economy. Most of us tolerate being payed little when working conditions are ok and there is freedom. The reason there are so few good programmers (or that they are in small pockets, or that most good software projects from academia are actually non-research side projects), is because software dev and maintenance it is not at all incentivized, chronically underfunded and understaffed. Short-term project-based financing structure makes any sustained software development hazardous. OTOH lets put the ugly project web-pages aside and browse through our distribution's package repository for foundational software. How many of them have been passed from hand to hand through generations of academic workers? Quite a lot.. The problem is not that "we are not good at it" or anything. It's just that nobody's giving a shit, so people do it in their "free time" and so the landscape looks a lot like free software. In fact there is a big intersection.
- analog31 4y ago
  That's certainly fair, thanks for the comment.
  - lapinot 4y ago
    :) i still agree with your later point tho!

lapinot 4y ago

> Anybody who's good enough at coding to do it for money is at risk of bailing out of science altogether. No. Tons of people in academia are in academia because they believe in free knowledge and because they want to work as public servants outside the realm of for-profit economy. Most of us tolerate being payed little when working conditions are ok and there is freedom. The reason there are so few good programmers (or that they are in small pockets, or that most good software projects from academia are actually non-research side projects), is because software dev and maintenance it is not at all incentivized, chronically underfunded and understaffed. Short-term project-based financing structure makes any sustained software development hazardous. OTOH lets put the ugly project web-pages aside and browse through our distribution's package repository for foundational software. How many of them have been passed from hand to hand through generations of academic workers? Quite a lot.. The problem is not that "we are not good at it" or anything. It's just that nobody's giving a shit, so people do it in their "free time" and so the landscape looks a lot like free software. In fact there is a big intersection.

analog31 4y ago
That's certainly fair, thanks for the comment.
- lapinot 4y ago
  :) i still agree with your later point tho!