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A comment on Research software code is likely to remain a tangled mess. Parent comment

Re:Research software code is likely to remain a tangled mess by bordercases on Monday February 22, 2021 @03:50PM (#26230416)
Results need to be refined so that the way they were first formulated doesn't get in the way of their replication. At scale, this too becomes a cost to industry.

In the small, this isn't different from taking a lab notebook and making it clearer and better summarized so that it can be passed on to the poor sucker who has to do what you did after you move on to another project.

Furthermore, software projects that are put under the same iterative stress you imply for R&D inevitably go through a refactoring phase so that performance isn't affected in the long run.

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Re:Research software code is likely to remain a tangled mess by brakus127 on Monday February 22, 2021 @04:14PM (#26230724)
Agreed that there should be a minimum bar for "completed" research code such as reproducibility and a clear summary, but engineers shouldn't expect the first version of a new algorithm to be easy to understand without additional material or ready for production without a complete rewrite.
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