Post AYvEwfKcgQ243y8mfo by n8@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by n8@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AYvEwXrIT3PmszMlUW by n8@mastodon.social
2023-08-20T08:47:21Z
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Obviously I'm all for code-pub, but I think work needs to be done to normalize publishing the messy/incomplete/piecemeal nature of research software. If you're like me (sorry), you barely have time to get it running once, it looks spaghettirific, and you didn't get to plan it from day one with a requirements doc.That makes folk reluctant to release; the reception from the software world is often critical (or it's feared to be).https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/110918041321108927(h/t to @mlinksva for the timelineboost)
(DIR) Post #AYvEwYjBEiW5a6ZnTk by liw@toot.liw.fi
2023-08-20T09:04:02Z
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@n8 @mlinksva I heard many times over the years that research software tends to "not up to professional software engineering standards". Not having a requirements document is part of that.In my experience, in the software industry, very little software of any kind has a requirements doc, at least not a useful one, never mind anything else that one might expect of quality software.I'd like to sit down with researchers, specifically, to discuses how to improve this, some day.
(DIR) Post #AYvEwbSH61mC2Xgq2q by n8@mastodon.social
2023-08-20T08:55:07Z
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e.g., probably 80% of the time I asked a FOSS-component-related question on a forum or mailing list, the first responses (or if not the first, extra loud ones) were people telling me my approach was wrong and/or I didn't actually need to do what I thought I wanted to. That being in reference to some application-driven development model / goal.But research often requires poking at things that are oblique / not well-modeled / not-routine. All sorts of "that's not what this library is for" stuff.
(DIR) Post #AYvEwbV6vU2qBL16Su by n8@mastodon.social
2023-08-20T10:47:36Z
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@liw @mlinksva Good points.I have nowhere near to any solutions to offer, of course. Perhaps face-to-face consulting/assistance at the university/institution level would be highest impact, but that sounds quite difficult.
(DIR) Post #AYvEwd2pBcbgyBnXea by clacke@libranet.de
2023-08-20T12:00:17Z
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@n8 The awesome solution would be that the institution keep experienced developers on payroll for researchers to collaborate with on software quality and practices, but even with preliminary evidence that code publication improves impact that's unlikely to happen.Maybe if a single institution somewhere in the world does this and can show results, it could start the ball rolling?@liw @mlinksva
(DIR) Post #AYvEwdqSD6J1S71B0i by petrichor@digipres.club
2023-08-20T12:11:47Z
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@clacke @n8 @liw @mlinksva Plenty of examples of this in the UK: Sheffield, Manchester, UCL, Edinburgh, Imperial College to name a few https://ukrse.github.io/groups.htmlWorth checking out https://society-rse.org/ and https://software.ac.uk/ for the growing body of evidence of the benefits of these roles and groups. Several other countries have Research Software Engineer associations too, including Germany and USA
(DIR) Post #AYvEwdqoBmabTDBSYy by n8@mastodon.social
2023-08-20T10:51:49Z
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*Sidenote, before North America wakes up: I do want to clarify that the experiences alluded to only account for situations where I was an outsider with a "how to" question.Where I engaged with teams and individuals I already knew (& vice-versa), it's not like that, even though they couldn't always refer me to an easy solution. But of course everybody's an outsider somewhere.And feature requests are a bit different, too. But I often got "Nobody needs that because libfoo is for something else"
(DIR) Post #AYvEwebxMUIrpRF73I by penguin42@mastodon.org.uk
2023-08-20T12:40:06Z
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@petrichor @clacke @n8 @liw @mlinksva Ah nice; I do recognise at least a couple of the Manchester people there; with some overlap of both the CS dept and what used to be Manchester Computing; which was a department that had existed for a long long time to help with computer use in other research areas.
(DIR) Post #AYvEwfAhHK5nZBUrCa by petrichor@digipres.club
2023-08-20T12:19:07Z
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@clacke @n8 @liw @mlinksva But yes, this is 100% essential to solving this: building a sustainable base of skills within the institution instead of always employing research software engineers on soft money fixed-term contracts and throwing their expertise away every 2-3 years.Changing the research culture as suggested is the other part of the equation. So many researchers hate admitting that they are anything less than expert in anything they do.
(DIR) Post #AYvEwfKcgQ243y8mfo by n8@mastodon.social
2023-08-20T09:00:31Z
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The other angle, of course, is that "software written for an academic reason" may also have to be tailored for being read by non-programmers, such as subject-matter experts. It's a lot clearer to follow linear code chunks in an appendix than something that's highly modular or optimized for OOPyness, and that might make a big difference when you need to show a finding to a community that doesn't have the time to learn a bunch of unfamiliar frameworks when they review what you've written./eof
(DIR) Post #AYvkYeKxvTlmYttQm0 by clacke@libranet.de
2023-08-20T18:12:05Z
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@penguin42 Are any of them on here? @petrichor @liw @n8 @mlinksva
(DIR) Post #AYvkYihRhq825mRRMu by penguin42@mastodon.org.uk
2023-08-20T18:34:23Z
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@clacke @n8 @petrichor @liw @mlinksva If they are I don't know their IDs, the two I recognise are people I've not spoken to in a LONG time.