%0 Journal Article %1 barnes2010pcc %A Barnes, Nick %D 2010 %J Nature %K code opensource science %N 753 %T Publish your computer code: it is good enough %U http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/467753a.html %V 467 %X I am a professional software engineer and I want to share a trade secret with scientists: most professional computer software isn't very good. The code inside your laptop, television, phone or car is often badly documented, inconsistent and poorly tested. Why does this matter to science? Because to turn raw data into published research papers often requires a little programming, which means that most scientists write software. And you scientists generally think the code you write is poor. It doesn't contain good comments, have sensible variable names or proper indentation. It breaks if you introduce badly formatted data, and you need to edit the output by hand to get the columns to line up. It includes a routine written by a graduate student which you never completely understood, and so on. Sound familiar? Well, those things don't matter.

@article{barnes2010pcc, abstract = {I am a professional software engineer and I want to share a trade secret with scientists: most professional computer software isn't very good. The code inside your laptop, television, phone or car is often badly documented, inconsistent and poorly tested. Why does this matter to science? Because to turn raw data into published research papers often requires a little programming, which means that most scientists write software. And you scientists generally think the code you write is poor. It doesn't contain good comments, have sensible variable names or proper indentation. It breaks if you introduce badly formatted data, and you need to edit the output by hand to get the columns to line up. It includes a routine written by a graduate student which you never completely understood, and so on. Sound familiar? Well, those things don't matter.}, added-at = {2010-10-16T17:02:30.000+0200}, author = {Barnes, Nick}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2bf86bd9089fdf7107fd22181c9880e76/yish}, interhash = {f40cb4f50fe9a308d1004746b0a85bbe}, intrahash = {bf86bd9089fdf7107fd22181c9880e76}, journal = {Nature}, keywords = {code opensource science}, note = {doi:10.1038/467753a }, number = 753, timestamp = {2010-10-16T17:02:30.000+0200}, title = {Publish your computer code: it is good enough}, url = {http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/467753a.html}, volume = 467, year = 2010 }