Re:Challenge to scientists: does your ten-year-old code stil...
by robocat on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @08:29PM
(#24277836)
> research labs overwhelmingly have the coding done by researchers and involved students
This is a general problem we all have, whenever we should employ a professional to do necessary work. The right professional will take a tenth of the time and the job will be done some multiple better. But how do you pick the right person?
I have two experiences with post-grad work that I think are relevant:
1. A friend needed some work done in a statistics package that used a language that felt like it was from the 80's. I was able to complete the work in a few hours, but I don't think a student could have done it (complicated need combined with a crappy language and IDE).
2. Another postdoc engineering friend needed to do some heavy duty data analysis, and she was recommended to learn C++. I suspect she wasted years learning C++, time which should have been spent on investigating different forms of analysis. She wanted to listen to her engineering fellows, not some practicing software engineer, so wasted her life not achieving much...
This is a general problem we all have, whenever we should employ a professional to do necessary work. The right professional will take a tenth of the time and the job will be done some multiple better. But how do you pick the right person?
I have two experiences with post-grad work that I think are relevant:
1. A friend needed some work done in a statistics package that used a language that felt like it was from the 80's. I was able to complete the work in a few hours, but I don't think a student could have done it (complicated need combined with a crappy language and IDE).
2. Another postdoc engineering friend needed to do some heavy duty data analysis, and she was recommended to learn C++. I suspect she wasted years learning C++, time which should have been spent on investigating different forms of analysis. She wanted to listen to her engineering fellows, not some practicing software engineer, so wasted her life not achieving much...