I was just typing my comment while you posted yours. I absolutely agree with this. Especially the "fluidity of the hacky code" - the environment that makes cool research happen is often the opposite of clean software engineering.
One thing that'd make it particularly difficult for me is that most of my early-stage experimentation is done in image-based environments with REPLs, not by editing code (Lisp, R; the Smalltalk people are also big on it). So I don't even have code to send! Well, some parts usually are in code, but it won't run unless you load it into my image and do the right thing with it. I have working images / image dumps, session transcripts, notes about what I did (some of which may be stuff I did by hand for the first proof-of-concept stage), etc. I find it a much more fluid way to work than code in a text editor, personally.
That is a huge part of my problem, as well. Sometimes when showing the code to an advisor/colleague I have to bring up an interpreter and type over 10 differend commands before something starts to work (and don't even get me started on the fact that half of my bookkeeping, logging, and plotting is done by made-at-the-time emacs macros).
