
Our Obligation to Build Open Source Software for Modern Science - cryptoz
http://www.jacobsheehy.com/2014/02/open-source-software-is-important-for-modern-science/?ob
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MichaelCrawford
I wrote some high energy physics data analysis software in FORTRAN for my UCSC
senior thesis in 1993. I even got to spend the summer at CERN. :-D

I required seven weeks to come to grips with CERNLIB and its associated tools
such as Patchy, a cross between IBM's JCL and Steve Martin's Cruel Shoes, four
days to write my code, then three days to run my simulation long enough to
write my thesis.

I had dropped out of school to work as a coder for six years, but decided to
complete my degree so I'd stop having to explain to why I never graduated in
job interviewers. So I knew quite a lot more about software development than
even the postdocs.

The grad students and postdocs were all stunned at the simple, pristine
readibility of my source. I scolded them all with "The reason that physics
software is so hard to write, is that YOU PHYSICISTS MAKE IT HARD!"

Every law of physics other than general relativity - gravity, loosely speaking
- is in CERNLIB somewhere, yet despite spending decades wandering its Gordian
labyrinth, I have yet to actually find any.

