[HN Gopher] Every modeler is supposed to be a great Python progr...
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       Every modeler is supposed to be a great Python programmer
        
       Author : jeffreyrogers
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2022-12-08 22:13 UTC (47 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu)
        
       | a_t48 wrote:
       | > I'd much rather get something working and then hand it off to
       | someone else who can refactor it for speed and clarity, and have
       | it conform to the desired style conventions, etc. etc.
       | 
       | I've been on the coding end of this - when everyone actually has
       | those fixed roles and goes into it eyes wide open, it goes pretty
       | well! When instead the PhD is assigned to go do the feature, and
       | then the programmer is called in later when it's not implemented
       | well, it tends to go quite poorly and nobody is happy, as
       | everyone's time is wasted.
        
       | version_five wrote:
       | This was something that surprised me after I did my PhD as well.
       | I thought that employers would focus on my specialized skills and
       | "someone else" would somehow pick up the pieces and make
       | something out of what I did. Turns out this is completely wrong,
       | and I now see how frustrating it is to work with people that have
       | this kind of attitude.
       | 
       | Most of most jobs is a bunch of mundane stuff. I've seen it in
       | software development, and I've seen it in management consulting.
       | The best people, typically, are those that will happily do both,
       | understanding that the fun stuff comes with a lot of baggage.
       | 
       | The "someone else is better at the stuff I don't want to do than
       | me" argument rarely holds up either. The friction that comes from
       | dividing the work along lines like modeling and production and
       | trying to hand off is rarely worth it when one person can do
       | both.
       | 
       | Anyway, I've been where the author is, but personally I think
       | it's wishful thinking, unless maybe you want to start your own
       | shop and structure it around yourself that way.
        
         | IIAOPSW wrote:
         | I have a name for the sort of mundane-yet-employable
         | programming tasks. "Plumbing work". You're not doing the clever
         | problem solving that once sucked you into programming, you're
         | welding pipes together that other people made.
        
         | linuxftw wrote:
         | Well, in purely software shops, there's often people dreaming
         | up the 'what to do' and a different group of people actually
         | writing the code. Same with systems design, we have
         | 'architects.'
         | 
         | This should be no different for statistical modelers or other
         | disciplines. Employers are just cheap.
        
         | whatshisface wrote:
         | It is not that surprising because software engineers are
         | usually more expensive than scientists. That leads business
         | people to ask serious questions about which staff they really
         | need, how much of that work can be done by lower-paid
         | specialists, and whether they really need the professional code
         | quality when the stuck-together python that scientists tend to
         | write usually also works.
        
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