3 ms·

If the non programmers commit correctness bugs and the programmers are just using patterns you don't like, maybe try to understand the patterns instead of balk

• InSteady 3y ago
  The author states they are primarily a software engineer and have also been guilty of following these patterns, so the clear implication is that they understand the patterns. The author isn't making the case "I don't like it," they are making the case that these patterns actually lead to more and bigger problems in the field of scientific computing than the usually simple errors of ignorance committed by non-programmers.
  • jayd16 3y ago
    They state clearly that they can't follow the call structures and often give up on understanding them.
• aragilar 3y ago
  Define "correctness bugs". Does the code leak memory (which is not ideal)? That's only an issue for the scientist if it prevents/invalidates the science. But if the pattern hides how something is expressed, or someone unfamiliar with the science tries refactoring the code, that's more likely to cause issues with the science than the memory leak.
  • jayd16 3y ago
    > Access all over the place – globals/singletons, "god objects" etc. Crashes (null pointers, bounds errors), largely mitigated by valgrind/massive testing Complete lack of interest in parallelism bugs (almost fully mitigated by tools)