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Your point is maybe a little obtuse to me, because it sounds like you are arguing for "computers are tools that should be learned, but really no one does and who can blame them, they just want to science" and simultaneously arguing, "tools aren't science, and science can be done without them". I feel like the later is obvious: of course the tools aren't science, but if you want to do real work and real science, your tools are going to be crucial for establishing measurements, repeatability, and sharing how one models their hypothesis onto real world mechanics. Likewise, the former is just the same commonly repeated thing I just argued against and my reply is the same: so what? You building a kayak is not science and is irrelevant. Scientists can't reach a meaningful conclusion without proper use of tools. All they can do is hypthesize, which is certainly a portion of science (and many fields are in fact stuck in this exact stage, unable to get further and come to grounded conclusions), but it is not the end-all of science, and getting to the end in the modern day science means knowing to program. Of course there are exceptions and limitations and "good enough". No one is arguing that. The argument I am refuting is those who think "tools are just tools, who cares, I just want my science". That is the poor attitude that makes no sense to me. |
I'm just trying to make the point that "proper" is subjective. Software developers evaluate the quality of code according to how well it adheres to well-established coding practices, but those practices were established to address long-term issues like maintainability and security, not whether the software produces the right answer.
You can get the right answer out of software even if the code is ugly and hacky, and for a lot of scientific research, the answer is all that matters.