[HN Gopher] Every modeler is supposed to be a great Python progr... ___________________________________________________________________ Every modeler is supposed to be a great Python programmer Author : jeffreyrogers Score : 7 points Date : 2022-12-08 22:13 UTC (47 minutes ago) (HTM) web link (statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu) | a_t48 wrote: | > I'd much rather get something working and then hand it off to | someone else who can refactor it for speed and clarity, and have | it conform to the desired style conventions, etc. etc. | | I've been on the coding end of this - when everyone actually has | those fixed roles and goes into it eyes wide open, it goes pretty | well! When instead the PhD is assigned to go do the feature, and | then the programmer is called in later when it's not implemented | well, it tends to go quite poorly and nobody is happy, as | everyone's time is wasted. | version_five wrote: | This was something that surprised me after I did my PhD as well. | I thought that employers would focus on my specialized skills and | "someone else" would somehow pick up the pieces and make | something out of what I did. Turns out this is completely wrong, | and I now see how frustrating it is to work with people that have | this kind of attitude. | | Most of most jobs is a bunch of mundane stuff. I've seen it in | software development, and I've seen it in management consulting. | The best people, typically, are those that will happily do both, | understanding that the fun stuff comes with a lot of baggage. | | The "someone else is better at the stuff I don't want to do than | me" argument rarely holds up either. The friction that comes from | dividing the work along lines like modeling and production and | trying to hand off is rarely worth it when one person can do | both. | | Anyway, I've been where the author is, but personally I think | it's wishful thinking, unless maybe you want to start your own | shop and structure it around yourself that way. | IIAOPSW wrote: | I have a name for the sort of mundane-yet-employable | programming tasks. "Plumbing work". You're not doing the clever | problem solving that once sucked you into programming, you're | welding pipes together that other people made. | linuxftw wrote: | Well, in purely software shops, there's often people dreaming | up the 'what to do' and a different group of people actually | writing the code. Same with systems design, we have | 'architects.' | | This should be no different for statistical modelers or other | disciplines. Employers are just cheap. | whatshisface wrote: | It is not that surprising because software engineers are | usually more expensive than scientists. That leads business | people to ask serious questions about which staff they really | need, how much of that work can be done by lower-paid | specialists, and whether they really need the professional code | quality when the stuck-together python that scientists tend to | write usually also works. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-08 23:00 UTC)