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A big concern for me has always been correctness. You're more likely to make mistakes and miss edge conditions in sloppy code. There's nothing worse than commun
by ozataman 14y ago
A big concern for me has always been correctness. You're more likely to make mistakes and miss edge conditions in sloppy code. There's nothing worse than communicating some positive/inspiring results, only to find out later that you had an elusive computational bug in there that invalidates the results.
This reminds me: A man was seen cutting a tree down with a dull bladed axe. A bystander asked him "Why not sharpen your axe first?". The cutter responded "I don't have the time!".
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- michaelbarton 14y agoI agree with respect to writing correct scientific software. I think in many cases though bugs are not found because who is going to download the software and test the conclusions? Unless it's a very big result, e.g. an arsenic backbone for DNA, few academics will spend the time to validate others results in this level of detail.