[w1ntermute]

Yes, I'm sure. I'm referring to scientific software - that is, software written in fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, and (non-computer) engineering. There are many grad students and professors in these areas who write software for their research that have no formal background in CS.

[denzil_correa]

OK - I think I'm surprised to know that those fields do write software more than anything. Thanks for the clarification.

[w1ntermute]

I wouldn't say they write software more than anything. I would say that there's a steadily increasing amount of time and energy invested into writing software, and very poor coding practices are used because of their lack of a formal grounding in CS and their short-term focus on obtaining the results necessary to publish their next paper and/or obtain their graduate degree.

[denzil_correa]

That's like a classic scientist - software engineer argument. The scientist says he wants to prototype with quick dirty code while the software engineer wants to write great refactored code.

[gammarator]

Yes, in those fields we literally "do write software more than anything" [else we do]. That is, most of what we're doing is writing software. So the fact that there's no formal training is a huge waste.