11–20 of 21 posts
Seems reasonable. An interesting bit for me was the CITATION file. The lack of citability for software is a recurring annoyance when writing up work that uses that software.
There are clearly still issues with versioning and so forth, but it's a start for software that isn't suitable for writing an article about.
One thing they (intentionally) left out was including a Makefile. This is one of the "Good Enough" practices that I also include. It doesn't matter if it is a Makefile or another master script or tool. What is important is that you have a manifest for how each derived data file was generated. And it should be able to be executed w/o arguments to have the entire analysis run from the raw/primary data. This has saved m…
Unless you use R markdown, in which case there is no need for a separate script or makefile.
The reason for that is there was rarely any visible benefit from putting in the work to follow good computing practices. It certainly created a lot of pain when jumbles of broken and unreadable code were passed on to new people, who basically ended up reimplementing everything from scratch (I was one such person), but there is exactly zero punishment for doing that, and very rarely any reward for cleaning up code and data. So why bother?
As with the open-source publishing debate, there has to be an incentive system in place, and then people will do it. There are standardized (and required!) practices for things like bio protocols or reporting PV-performance data - only if computing had something similar do I see anything improving.
I'd like to see ongoing discussion of the extent that HN-posted research conforms to being "Good Enough."
I'd like to see ongoing discussion of the extent that HN-posted research conforms to being "Good Enough."
Here's a task for you: whenever you see a piece of research posted to HN, run it through a checklist from this article and post it as a comment. I'll happily upvote. It will surely keep the discussion going on HN constantly :).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a task for you: whenever you see a piece of research posted to HN, run it through a checklist from this article and post it as a comment. I'll happily upvote. It will surely keep the discussion going on HN constantly :).
Why stop there? Let's build a ML system that does this for us! How long before the Show HN submission?
I'd like to see ongoing discussion of the extent that HN-posted research conforms to being "Good Enough."
Here's a task for you: whenever you see a piece of research posted to HN, run it through a checklist from this article and post it as a comment. I'll happily upvote. It will surely keep the discussion going on HN constantly :).
I disagree with the part that recommends BSD instead of GPL. It's a myth that GPL doesn't allow software to be used for commercial ends. It only forces the person to contribute back the changes, letting the others profit from their work as they profited from theirs.
If the goal of making your software open source is to allow anyone to use it, GPL makes that _harder_.
Seems reasonable. An interesting bit for me was the CITATION file. The lack of citability for software is a recurring annoyance when writing up work that uses that software.