Comment by hackoo

Comment by hackoo 2 days ago

As an R developer, I can deeply relate to this. People that use R as the mother language are probably from academia. They can be very good at data analysis and scripting, but usually have no idea of software development. They have few knowledge about versioning, modularization, documentation, and testing, which can lead to issues when they develop production-level R packages and Shiny applications.

On the flip side, R developers with strong software development skills can be incredibly valuable in academic settings.

coliveira 2 days ago

Everything you say explains why R is a great language in academia, and why people in research will stay away from "software engineering"-oriented languages like Java and JavaScript. Researchers already have too much to worry about.

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hackoo 2 days ago

I agree that researchers usually don’t need to worry about software engineering because their code is often simple, used only for one paper, and intended for personal use. But for large-scale research involving multiple researchers, users, and datasets, software engineering mindset can be beneficial in the long term.

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giraffe_lady 2 days ago

I have a friend who left tech after 15 years to go back and get a CS phd. He ended up with a permanent job being the only "software guy" on a team of like exclusively math and physics post-docs. I'm still a little fuzzy on his day-to-day but I think it's basically just having enough of a handle on the research math to effectively product manage all the gnarly research code they produce. It sounds both frustrating and fun.

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hackoo 2 days ago

It can be frustrating if those post-docs underestimate the time cost and engineering complexity of software development. They would complain why it takes so long for your friend to "just" change a button in some app.

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