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by Endy
2849 days ago
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Part of the problem with research as it stands is that the software tools have become bloated, and are doing too much at once by having to be "commercial" and profit-motivated. If the tools were being made to do one thing well within a single discipline - or even better, to fit the needs of a single experiment, it is my belief that the processor and RAM loads would drop precipitously. They could go even further down if the tool didn't need to be pretty enough to sell to non-scientists, both in terms of money and of mentality, but rather that these research tools were focused entirely on simplicity of raw data input and clarity of data output without interpretations. Even in sciences where it shouldn't be the norm, we tend to have "dumb" people reliant on smart computers for interpretation of results, instead of smart people using dumb computers as tools to aid computation. Frankly, even if you still believe there's reason that certain research scientists would need that kind of processing power and storage at times, that doesn't excuse the fact that the OS should not be taking up that time. An OS should exist to load user programs, allow data access by users and programs, provide a platform for peripheral connections as needed, and otherwise get out of the way with a bare minimum load. |
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Most tools within the sciences that require vast computation power aren't pretty, nor output data in a nice, readable form. What do you think university supercomputers are for? They run extremely stripped-down operating systems[0] designed for a single application & single user.
I'm at a research university (as a student) and I guarantee that most home-grown tools here are not user-friendly, but exist to get the job done. This data is then interpreted in other, more user-friendly programs/environments like Tableu/Matlab/Julia/whatever.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INK_(operating_system)