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Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?

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Re: Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?

#251

Post by mcguire »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #244
actually_a_dog wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a little OT, but, I'd rather it be called "comput ing science." Computers are just the tool. I believe it was Dijkstra who famously objected to it being called "computer science," because they don't call astronomy "telescope science," or something to that effect.

I never thought about this, but it's right. However, to get more nitpicky, most of the uses of "Comput[er|ing] Science" should be replaced with "Computer Engineering" anyway. If you are building something for a company, you are doing engineering, not science research

Be careful there. If you start calling what you're doing 'engineering', people will want you to know statics, dynamics, and thermodynamics.

Re: Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?

#252

Post by erk__ »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #238
paulluuk wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't call it "Computer Science" for nothing ;)

Maybe a little OT, but, I'd rather it be called "comput ing science." Computers are just the tool. I believe it was Dijkstra who famously objected to it being called "computer science," because they don't call astronomy "telescope science," or something to that effect.

Peter Naur agreed with that which is why it is called "Datalogi" in Denmark and Sweden, his English term Datalogy never really caught on though. He wrote it in a letter to the editor in 1966 and it has pretty much been used since then here as Naur founded the first Datalogy university faculty a few years later.

This also lead to a strange naming now we have data science as well where it is called "Data videnskab" which is just a literal translation of the English term.

[0]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/365719.366510 (sadly behind a wall)

Re: Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?

#253

Post by woah »

del82 wrote: post #25

> it's substantially more work to clean and organize the code for publishing, it will increase the surface for nitpicking and criticism (e.g. coding style, etc). Matt Might has a solution for this that I love: Don't clean & organize! Release it under the CRAPL[0], making explicit what everyone understands, viz.: "Generally, academic software is stapled together on a tight deadline; an expert user has to coerce it int…

I'm not a scientist so maybe I don't get it, but it seems like code could be analogized to a chemist's laboratory (roughly). If a chemist published pictures of their lab setup in their paper, and it turned out that they were using dirty glassware, paper cups instead of beakers, duct taping joints, etc etc, wouldn't that cast some doubt on their results? They would be getting "nitpicked" but would it be unfair? Maybe their result would be reproducible regardless of their sloppy practices, but until then I would be more skeptical than I would be of a clean and orderly lab.

Re: Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?

#256

Post by nkko »

grahamlee wrote: post #182

Hi, I’m a Research Software Engineer (a person who makes software that helps academics/researchers) at a university in the UK. My recommendation is that not only do you publish the code, you mint a DOI (digital object identifier, Zenodo is usually the go to place for that) for the specific version that was used in your paper and you associate them. And you include a citation file (GitHub supports them now: https://do…

And I would suppose it will drive more citations. Which is a plus!

Re: Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?

#257

Post by aqfamnzc »

skrebbel wrote: post #163
goodpoint wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not what licenses are for!! They are not statements about the quality of your work or anything similar. Use standard and well understood licenses e.g. GPL for code and CC for documentation. The world does not need more license fragmentation.

This has explicit usage limitations that matter in science land, which is very much the kind of thing that belongs in a license. Eg: You are permitted to use the Program to validate scientific claims submitted for peer review, under the condition that You keep modifications to the Program confidential until those claims have been published. Moreover, sure, lots of the license is text that isn't common in legal docume…

By existing, you have agreed to the terms and conditions.

Re: Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?

#258

Post by andrewzah »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #244
actually_a_dog wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a little OT, but, I'd rather it be called "comput ing science." Computers are just the tool. I believe it was Dijkstra who famously objected to it being called "computer science," because they don't call astronomy "telescope science," or something to that effect.

I never thought about this, but it's right. However, to get more nitpicky, most of the uses of "Comput[er|ing] Science" should be replaced with "Computer Engineering" anyway. If you are building something for a company, you are doing engineering, not science research

The average developer isn't often doing "engineering". Until we have actual standards and a certification process, "engineer[ing]" doesn't mean anything.

The average software developer doesn't even know much math.

Right now, "software engineer" basically means "has a computer, -perhaps- knows a little bit about what goes on under the hood".

Re: Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?

#259

Post by reillyse »

To be frank, nobody cares about your code. I’d be shocked and flattered if anybody read any of the code I wrote during my PhD. Publish the code in its current state and move on. If people take the time to actually read and nit pick your code you’ll have succeeded.

Re: Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?

#260

Post by register »

Yes you should. Just publishing as it is would be enough. Everybody understands that academic code is pretty experimental and nobody would judge it if it is pretty or not. The reason why you should publish it is to gain trust. Back when I was doing my PhD I found several instances of papers that had results that were nearly impossible to reproduce to the point that I sometimes believed they were just fakes. I am pretty sure in most of the cases that is not the case but....
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