[coliveira]

It is obvious that we need good software, however from the point of view of science the old professor may have reason. If you are receiving a grant, you're not being paid to write software, in the same way that an engineer is not paid to write novels. As useful as the software may be, the person in question should be spending time on research (by definition new subjects), not writing again an existing software.

[ivirshup]

> If you are receiving a grant, you're not being paid to write software

In my (albeit limited) experience, software is a pretty common deliverable from a grant, at least in computational biology. This has also been my experience with more alternative funding sources like CZI and DARPA.

Taken more broadly, I think there is a huge disconnect between what academics are paid to do, and what takes most of their time. Review is unpaid. Grants are not dependent on which journal the results go into, but time could be saved by aiming lower. A salary can be payed from a research grant, while the investigator still has to teach.

[DiogenesKynikos]

What if that piece of software increases research output across the entire field? Often, a good piece of scientific software advances research more than what you're calling "research."

[kergonath]

Writing software is sometimes necessary to achieve the objectives of a grant (even though this is not necessarily explicit). It’s not writing software that’s a problem, it’s reinventing the wheel; you should not focus on “scientists should not write software”, because that is obviously far from the truth.

For a scientist, writing useful software is a good way to get exposure, build a reputation and get citations. It’s an opportunity to do some different kind of problem solving than usual. It’s also a way of understanding how the software really work (which assumptions are built in, which methods are used, and how does it affect the software’s results?). This does help improve the quality of subsequent results.

A grant typically (there are exceptions, of course) lists things that are going to be studied. How the studying is done is typically down to the people doing the work. It certainly isn’t for grumpy old professors who hear a talk at a conference to judge.