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"Academic research and production code have different, conflicting, requirements." Have you ever actually produced any academic research code? Because my dire

by timr 13y ago

"Academic research and production code have different, conflicting, requirements." Have you ever actually produced any academic research code? Because my direct experience with the matter says that you're wrong. I've seen plenty of "academic projects" that had far wider distribution, bigger teams and more complexity than your average "production code" (most of which is never used by anyone). "I know people who are fantastic researchers, but their code should never go into a production system. I know people who write beautiful code, but they'd never have something good enough for academia." I know a great many people in industry who micro-optimize for beauty and who go off on architecture astronautic expeditions with no provocation, so what's your point? Are you generalizing to all academics? I can tell you for a fact that "academics" as a group don't care more or less about beautiful code than anyone else, and that research is just another kind of production system. You pretty clearly have a bias that "academia" is this ivory tower place where nobody gets anything done, and that's a stereotype, not reality.

IanCal 13y ago
You seem to think I'm attacking all academics, I'm not. I've repeatedly said that people on both sides write bad code. > Have you ever actually produced any academic research code? Yes. I've also maintained other peoples academic research code. > I've seen plenty of "academic projects" that had far wider distribution, bigger teams and more complexity than your average "production code" (most of which is never used by anyone). And there are plenty of industrial projects with wider distribution and with bigger teams than a lot of academic projects. > I know a great many people in industry who micro-optimize for beauty and who go off on architecture astronautic expeditions with no provocation, so what's your point? There are bad people on both sides, and that being good at one side does not necessarily mean you're good at the other. I thought that was clear in my previous replies, but maybe not clear enough. > You pretty clearly have a bias that "academia" is this ivory tower place where nobody gets anything done, and that's a stereotype, not reality. Please quote me where I've said anything like that. Your first reply to me was taking something I said and repeating my point back at me, to be honest it's just getting a bit tiring. So here's a change, I'm going to ask you this: Do you think that there are some people who are good researchers but bad coders?

by timr 13y ago

IanCal 13y ago

You seem to think I'm attacking all academics, I'm not. I've repeatedly said that people on both sides write bad code. > Have you ever actually produced any academic research code? Yes. I've also maintained other peoples academic research code. > I've seen plenty of "academic projects" that had far wider distribution, bigger teams and more complexity than your average "production code" (most of which is never used by anyone). And there are plenty of industrial projects with wider distribution and with bigger teams than a lot of academic projects. > I know a great many people in industry who micro-optimize for beauty and who go off on architecture astronautic expeditions with no provocation, so what's your point? There are bad people on both sides, and that being good at one side does not necessarily mean you're good at the other. I thought that was clear in my previous replies, but maybe not clear enough. > You pretty clearly have a bias that "academia" is this ivory tower place where nobody gets anything done, and that's a stereotype, not reality. Please quote me where I've said anything like that. Your first reply to me was taking something I said and repeating my point back at me, to be honest it's just getting a bit tiring. So here's a change, I'm going to ask you this: Do you think that there are some people who are good researchers but bad coders?