[SciPy-User] peer review of scientific software

[Calvin Morrison]

On 27 May 2013 13:44, Alan G Isaac <alan.isaac at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6134/814.summary


Maybe I can use this as a ranting point.

As a background I am a programmer, but I have been hired by various
professors and other academic people to work on projects. My biggest
problem with the "scientific computing" community is having to put up with
this crap!

I am so sick of reading a paper, that will exactly fulfill my needs, only
to find out the software has disappeared, only works on HP-UX on one
computer in the world, or has absolutely zero documentation.

I've started pushing my lab to follow standards, use version control,
document our changes, and publish our code. So far it is going really well,
but I can only do so much.

If only all of all students had a few basic "proper programming practices"
courses, everything would go a lot smoother. Teaching programming is fine,
but why don't we teach our scientists the best way to collaborate in the
21st century?

Below is another related paper that is a good starting point for converting
users. Enough emailing tarballs back and forth! Enough undocumented code!
Enough is Enough!

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.0530v3.pdf

Pissed-off Scientific Programmer,
Calvin Morrison
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