35 ms·

Don’t think so, no. A physicist has other stuff to learn and spend their time on. Instead, they should partner with a carpenter to do their woodworking from a r

by 9dev 3y ago

Don’t think so, no. A physicist has other stuff to learn and spend their time on. Instead, they should partner with a carpenter to do their woodworking from a rough sketch.

sidlls 3y ago
If your point is that the physicist should partner with someone who is a "professional programmer" ("carpenter") to do the coding, I couldn't disagree more, speaking as a former research physicist who wrote many programs while I was in academia. A "rough sketch" is not enough for a "carpenter" to go off of for the programs a physicist using computational techniques is writing. They'd need to have a sophisticated understanding of the physics and the mathematical model involved: which almost no "carpenters" have.
- 9dev 3y ago
  Now we’re lost in metaphors. A carpenter should definitely be able to build a pergola from a rough paper sketch, and a software engineer should be able to build a machine learning system from an algorithm paper by a data scientist.
  - sidlls 3y ago
    That really depends on what you mean by "machine learning system." For a business, implementing some researched algorithm and essentially using a template? Sure, it's possible. The research that goes into producing the algorithm in the first place? Probably not. There may be some classes of scientific programming which have simple enough models for a software engineer to implement. Scientific programming that relies on deep understanding of the domain and mathematical models employed to study it don't fit in that category.
    - 9dev 3y ago
      Of course it always depends on the context. But my point still stands: a software developer is someone specialising in creating and maintaining code for an application. Any domain knowledge they may need for a particular application doesn’t matter here; their core skill set is software, whereas a scientists core skill set is active research. Just because some scientific disciplines require extensive programming doesn’t make those scientists good software engineers: Producing an algorithm is different from generating revenue from it.
kolinko 3y ago
It’s like saying that a scientist doesn’t need to know how to write, and they should just pair up with ghostwriters/copywriters. Many professions have tool/skill requirements that are not related to that profession on a strict sense, but are still necessary to do the job properly. When I learned engineering we were taught how to draw diagrams by hand and write in a technical font. Computer code, for many science fields, is like diagrams but for theories.
- esafak 3y ago
  It depends on what you consider a core skill. One has to specialize; that means leaving secondary tasks to others.
  - madsbuch 3y ago
    This is only true for systems where comparative advantage applies. Academia is not one of these places (as they explicitly don't want to be a part of the economy, which I understand).
- 9dev 3y ago
  > It’s like saying that a scientist doesn’t need to know how to write, and they should just pair up with ghostwriters/copywriters. And I'd say that illustrates my point even better! A scientist needs to know how to write a paper, but that doesn’t make them a great author. When they aim to write a book, they should get help from a professional publisher. Both tasks require writing text, but a book is very different from a paper and requires heaps of additional training and knowledge that scientists usually don’t need to have.
  - madsbuch 3y ago
    > but that doesn’t make them a great author This is also widely considered a huge issue in academia. The dissemination is so bad that a lot of great research is never read by others. Academia is not a business. They barely can sustain themselves, therefore, they need to do things themselves. It is though to be a physicist. Mostly because you, besides being a great physicist, also need to be a good programmer and a good author.

by 9dev 3y ago

Don’t think so, no. A physicist has other stuff to learn and spend their time on. Instead, they should partner with a carpenter to do their woodworking from a rough sketch.

sidlls 3y ago

If your point is that the physicist should partner with someone who is a "professional programmer" ("carpenter") to do the coding, I couldn't disagree more, speaking as a former research physicist who wrote many programs while I was in academia. A "rough sketch" is not enough for a "carpenter" to go off of for the programs a physicist using computational techniques is writing. They'd need to have a sophisticated understanding of the physics and the mathematical model involved: which almost no "carpenters" have.

9dev 3y ago
Now we’re lost in metaphors. A carpenter should definitely be able to build a pergola from a rough paper sketch, and a software engineer should be able to build a machine learning system from an algorithm paper by a data scientist.
- sidlls 3y ago
  That really depends on what you mean by "machine learning system." For a business, implementing some researched algorithm and essentially using a template? Sure, it's possible. The research that goes into producing the algorithm in the first place? Probably not. There may be some classes of scientific programming which have simple enough models for a software engineer to implement. Scientific programming that relies on deep understanding of the domain and mathematical models employed to study it don't fit in that category.
  - 9dev 3y ago
    Of course it always depends on the context. But my point still stands: a software developer is someone specialising in creating and maintaining code for an application. Any domain knowledge they may need for a particular application doesn’t matter here; their core skill set is software, whereas a scientists core skill set is active research. Just because some scientific disciplines require extensive programming doesn’t make those scientists good software engineers: Producing an algorithm is different from generating revenue from it.

kolinko 3y ago

It’s like saying that a scientist doesn’t need to know how to write, and they should just pair up with ghostwriters/copywriters. Many professions have tool/skill requirements that are not related to that profession on a strict sense, but are still necessary to do the job properly. When I learned engineering we were taught how to draw diagrams by hand and write in a technical font. Computer code, for many science fields, is like diagrams but for theories.

esafak 3y ago
It depends on what you consider a core skill. One has to specialize; that means leaving secondary tasks to others.
- madsbuch 3y ago
  This is only true for systems where comparative advantage applies. Academia is not one of these places (as they explicitly don't want to be a part of the economy, which I understand).
9dev 3y ago
> It’s like saying that a scientist doesn’t need to know how to write, and they should just pair up with ghostwriters/copywriters. And I'd say that illustrates my point even better! A scientist needs to know how to write a paper, but that doesn’t make them a great author. When they aim to write a book, they should get help from a professional publisher. Both tasks require writing text, but a book is very different from a paper and requires heaps of additional training and knowledge that scientists usually don’t need to have.
- madsbuch 3y ago
  > but that doesn’t make them a great author This is also widely considered a huge issue in academia. The dissemination is so bad that a lot of great research is never read by others. Academia is not a business. They barely can sustain themselves, therefore, they need to do things themselves. It is though to be a physicist. Mostly because you, besides being a great physicist, also need to be a good programmer and a good author.