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Science needs more research software engineers

nature.com

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Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#61

Post by Mountain_Skies »

andi999 wrote: post #39
Nursie wrote: post #17

The other side of "We need software engineers in research" is surely the botched covid model from Imperial College way back at the beginning of the pandemic. The group that produced it had the audacity to complain that the software industry didn't make C++ foolproof enough, and it was our fault that the modelling was wrong. This shows the attitude that some folks in these places have - what you do is easy, and rather…

Any reference for that incident, i havent heard of it and am curious.

Good post on the subject.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30146245

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#62

Post by barry-cotter »

JetAlone wrote: post #15
mywaifuismeta wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last point is important. In my experience it's mostly about status. RSEs are always seen as inferior to researchers (research scientists) who supposedly come up with the "big ideas" while RSEs merely implement the stuff they're told to do. In reality the line is much blurrier. There can be no innovation and iteration without implementation of ideas and the RSE work is just as important. But unless this view chang…

According to a quick search for the case of researchers, and the stereotype of most staff in academia across the board being underpaid, this means academic researchers would have even less incentives/perks/reward, because now they have one less beneficial status differential. Is there some way to make human respect feel like it's not a zero sum game? The world may never know.

> Is there some way to make human respect feel like it's not a zero sum game?

Respect is non zero sum but status is definitionally a positional good. If you’re number 1 someone else isn’t. There can be uncertainty about status but ambiguity always collapses eventually. Everyone can be treated with respect but there will be a prestige or dominance hierarchy in any group of humans, subtle as it may be.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#63

Post by Nursie »

andi999 wrote: post #39
Nursie wrote: post #17

The other side of "We need software engineers in research" is surely the botched covid model from Imperial College way back at the beginning of the pandemic. The group that produced it had the audacity to complain that the software industry didn't make C++ foolproof enough, and it was our fault that the modelling was wrong. This shows the attitude that some folks in these places have - what you do is easy, and rather…

Any reference for that incident, i havent heard of it and am curious.

Here's the open letter criticising our entire profession for producing something as terrible as C++ and allowing scientists to get into trouble with it -

http://blog.khinsen.net/posts/2020/05/18/an-open-letter-to-s...

There are links back to other parts of the story in the text there. Effectively, they built a model that predicted some real worst-case stuff, and used that as the basis for advice they sent out to try and affect government policy in a bunch of places. When the code was finally released and examined, it was in a bad state - 15k lines in one source file, race conditions, single name globals reused all over the place. The results were trash. Then the blame started to fly.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#64

Post by hoseja »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #34
bmitc wrote: post #24

I don't think scientists want research software engineers. PIs typically like to assume any and every role on a project, including software design. They don't like handing things off and letting people build modern, best practices software. You start talking about source code control, package managers, a language used in industry that they've never even heard of and don't care enough to learn about, etc., and you jus…

See this infamous discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/6l2esd/d_w... Tldr: They view software as just a tool and don't see how they'll benefit from following best practices.

Good craftsmen care for their "just tools", this is delinquency.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#68

Post by cameldrv »

ethanwillis wrote: post #2

Well, then science needs to do more to create an environment where software engineers would want to be an RSE. From my experience "science" does not appreciate RSEs, the compensation is bad, the freedom is bad, and you get all of the big company bureaucracy from the University. It's just a bad environment and to top it off, even if you have a PhD many will see you as "less than."

IME that's all true. To say that they need to do more to create a more positive environment for research engineers though depends on the perspective.

From the perspective of the university and the PI, they can just get a graduate student to do the work for 1/5 the cost.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#69

Post by kimixa »

ethanwillis wrote: post #2

Well, then science needs to do more to create an environment where software engineers would want to be an RSE. From my experience "science" does not appreciate RSEs, the compensation is bad, the freedom is bad, and you get all of the big company bureaucracy from the University. It's just a bad environment and to top it off, even if you have a PhD many will see you as "less than."

I certainly agree - it was about 10 years ago now, but I did a physics degree and ended up pivoting to computer science. I offered to help a couple of friends in the department with their analysis, and ended up writing the majority of their code in actually analysing their experimental results. In both cases, their supervisor decided not to put my name in the resulting papers, and treated me less than a lab tech.

Why would anyone want to do that, when a six-figure tech company salary is just next door?

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#70

Post by BeetleB »

cameldrv wrote: post #68
ethanwillis wrote: post #2

Well, then science needs to do more to create an environment where software engineers would want to be an RSE. From my experience "science" does not appreciate RSEs, the compensation is bad, the freedom is bad, and you get all of the big company bureaucracy from the University. It's just a bad environment and to top it off, even if you have a PhD many will see you as "less than."

IME that's all true. To say that they need to do more to create a more positive environment for research engineers though depends on the perspective. From the perspective of the university and the PI, they can just get a graduate student to do the work for 1/5 the cost.

> From the perspective of the university and the PI, they can just get a graduate student to do the work for 1/5 the cost.

That is what they do. However, some projects grow in scale where a grad student cannot handle it well, or if they try, it will be a detriment to their research. To give you an example, only one of the PhD students (non-CS engineering) in my group and the ones around me had taken data structures or algorithms - yet everyone's thesis was "computational" (i.e. numerical computation, etc). None of the advisors would appreciate their students going off and taking serious CS courses.

When a research team wants to go to the next level, they need to hire someone with better SW skills.

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