[pjotrp]

The bio in bioinformatics is the important bit. Informatics plays second fiddle, even in the name. Very few will appreciate your beautiful code, but many will appreciate you finding a cure for cancer. That is the reality of bioinformatics, most of the code has a short shelf life. If you luck out, your software may live longer, as is the case with samtools. That samtools code is crappy is true, still the much cleaner code alternatives, sambamba and bamtools, are not much used! Go figure.

Maybe bioinformatics is not the place to aim for great informatics. We do bioinformatics because of love of science first and foremost. This is frontier land, the wild west, and it pays to play quick and dirty. I would suggest to hang on to some best practices, e.g. modularity, TDD and BDD, but forget about appreciation. Dirty Harry, as a bioinformatician you are on your own.

To be honest, in industry it is not much different. These days, coders are carpenters. If you really want to be a diva, learn to sing instead.