25 Jun
2019
25 Jun
'19
6:55 a.m.
On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 05:45:23PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
Like I said, I can point anyone at code I wrote as a grad student that
while I'm not proud of the style, it has style and it is clean. Just
because you are a grad student that doesn't excuse messy code. If you
write messy code then you're a bad hire.
This is akin to complaining about laborers not polishing railroad spikes
before hammering them into the sleepers. It's hard enough to find
people willing to touch computers at all for grad-student "wages," much
less ones both capable & willing to be held to production-code standards
on budgets that barely put food on the table, one fiscal year at a time.
The systems engineer side of me really wants to agree with you, but the
state of academic computing has not been amenable to this standard for
some years -- ever, in terms of my career. We're lucky to get working
code, full stop. There is no funding for *nice* code. Funding directed
toward nice code will be cut next quarter. People advocating for
funding for nice code will find their annual performance review is
suddenly a multi-player game.
Some institutions are better than others. The place I work now has
explicit policies regarding "sustainable" software development, and it's
an absolute delight ... which does not exist in many (most?) places.
khm