> I've been working, ... in an environment dominated by people with a background in math or physics who often have sparse knowledge of "software engineering". .

> I've been working, ... in an environment dominated by people with a background in math or physics who often have sparse knowledge of "software engineering". ... Invariably, the biggest messes are made by the minority of people who do define themselves as programmers. Interesting switch in language here from "software engineering" to "programmers". There is of course a long history of debate on these terms, whether there is a meaningful distinction, and what qualifies as engineering versus programming. Wherever you stand on this debate, there are a number of practices of software developers that tend to be used more towards the "engineering" side. Two of the most essential in my mind are peer code reviews and automated testing of changes (with tests, linters, type-checkers, code formatters, profilers, fuzzers, etc.). This post doesn't talk about any of these practices or whether the so-called "programmers" messing up the scientific code are using them. I'd say if the people messing up the code are not actually advocating for using software development tools to write better code they are not actually applying software engineering practices to their code.