Physics and math software is usually fine, sure, since the performance and reliability of the code matters in the experiments. I mean traditional biology and th

Physics and math software is usually fine, sure, since the performance and reliability of the code matters in the experiments. I mean traditional biology and the less computer-oriented sciences, where they tend to just use scripts to filter data into a usable form, crunch some numbers, and generate visualizations. There, unless the software is the point of the research, writing code doesn't get the same priority (or respect) as traditional experiments. A lot of those professors just don't care about writing maintainable code; I'm guessing Dr. Briffa is one of those.