Program Translation - Nov. 14, 2013

[Rainer Weikusat]

Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:
>  Henry Law <news at lawshouse.org> wrote:
>
>> On 17/11/13 14:37, E.D.G. wrote:
>> > All of my own important programs are written using Perl.  I am starting
>> > to run into calculation speed limitations with one of the programs.
>> 
>> Your Perl code is, er, sub-optimal.  There is absolutely no point in 
>> doing benchmarks until you've improved the code.
>
> Having spent many years in science (molecular biology), I disagree with 
> this sentiment.
>
> Scientists view computer programs as tools, no different from any other 
> piece of lab equipment or instrumentation they use.  When picking a tool 
> to use, it's perfectly reasonable to evaluate what performance you can 
> get out of that without having to be an expert in its use.  If I'm using 
> a spectrophotometer, there may be many things that instrument is capable 
> of doing, but as long as I'm getting the data I need from it, it's 
> serving my purpose.  My goal is to do science, not to be an expert on 
> optics, or electronics, or data processing.
>
> The same goes for programming languages.

Indeed it does. So, while your comfortable with BUYING spectrophotometers
built by people who know how to do that, why on earth do you insist on
hacking your own 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' crap code together to
evaluate the data INSTEAD of concentrating on 'the science'?