[analog31]

Admittedly, I'm one of those people. This problem also applies to the use of Excel for exploratory programming and analysis.

There are no guides that I'm aware of. Part of the reason may be a mild "culture" divide between casual and professional programmers, for lack of better terms. Any HN thread about "scientific" programming will include some comments to the effect that we should just leave programming to the pro's.

My advice is to immerse yourself in the actual work environment of the casual programmers: Observe how we work, what pressures and obstacles we face, what makes our domain unique, and so forth. Figure out what solutions work for the people in the trenches. My team hired an experienced dev, and I asked him specifically to help me with this. One thing I can say for sure is that practical measures will be incremental -- ways that we can improve our code on the fly. They will also have to recognize a vast range of skills, ranging from raw beginners to coders with decades of experience (and habits).

Jot down what you learn, and share it. I think our side of the cultural divide needs help, and would welcome some guidance.

[pbowyer]

I agree with you, having been on both sides of the divide and researched & written my masters thesis on teaching programming to undergrad science students.

Are you aware of https://software-carpentry.org/? It started after I graduated and I knew people who were involved with it at the time. It seemed like a good idea.

[webmaven]

Care to share a link to your thesis? I'm always interested in work in this area.

[pbowyer]

It looks like I didn't put it on Arxiv, so I need to find a copy and then put it back online :) Will reply here when I do, but likely to be a week+ before I do

[webmaven]

Any luck?

[KarlKemp]

There’s nothing wrong with excel (as long as you stay below the 64k limit). People use it because it works. That is almost tautologically close to whatever it is that software aspires to.

Excel has gotten more people to write code than all other programming environments together. And they’ve often enjoyed doing it. It’s a fantastic success story.

[analog31]

Quite agreed, Excel is great, more important than Word or PowerPoint if you ask me.

But in terms of writing organized, readable code that can be used by other people, there's very little guidance.