4 ms·
It may seem wrong, but in practice it isn't. My experience with researcher-written code is that it does things in a roundabout, ugly, inefficient, duplicated-li
by ahelwer 15y ago
It may seem wrong, but in practice it isn't. My experience with researcher-written code is that it does things in a roundabout, ugly, inefficient, duplicated-library-function but ultimately correct way.
The programs are not complicated. They are usually just some implementation of an equation or some other method for transforming input into output. Researchers don't have hundreds of hours to invest in learning the nuances of the const keyword in C++ or whatever, so they hack it. It works.
- Turing_Machine 15y ago"It works." How would they know? Because it produces output that looks like what they're expecting? That might work...until it doesn't. :-)
- IsTom 15y agoChecking extensional equality of programs is a task that is impossible to perform. If code is not well written, there ARE bugs lurking in the sourcefiles that just are unnoticed. Only computer scientists and mathematicians seem to understand this and try to prove correctness of their programs/results.