Though you do have a point, I think it's really not binary like that; you've given end-members. There are a good number of scientists (myself included) who spe

Though you do have a point, I think it's really not binary like that; you've given end-members. There are a good number of scientists (myself included) who spend at least part of the time making applications for other researchers; it's best when the products are multi-platform, because there are a lot of scientists who only use one platform. These application can be anything from plotting and basic analysis tools to simulators of various sorts. They're more specialized than Evernote or something but are still designed to be installed and used by members of the community, because it's a waste of time for everyone to write their own finite element models (even if everyone knew how). When done right, not only are these tools enabling but they become very widely cited. For instance, in my field (geoscience) a tool called GMT (Generic Mapping Tools) has over 6000 citations, even though I'd estimate 70% of papers that have used it in some form don't cite it. This is an enormous number of citations in the geosciences; most very famous and influential papers have ~1-2000. Maybe it's different in CS; I have heard that much of the software is illustrating a new algorithm or something.