I am not a researcher in the sense that I'm not publishing papers but I'm a consumer of research. Every day I can find the source code for the paper is a great day. Even if it's some language I don't use I still have something to go off of. Often it's easier to red some code to understand the method than to read the paper itself. I'm used to read code. I do it almost everyday and I'm relatively proficient at it. I'm not very well at untangling academic language or having to read 30 years worth of papers to get all the assumptions made in a paper.
As an example, I've found a paper that promises a method to do the very thing I want to accomplish. It's not too dense but it skips a few crucial moments and I've been working on coding the method for a year now (on and off, of course but still for a long time). If the code was available it probably wouldn't take as long. The paper didn't mention that the code was available upon request but it was implemented in a piece of software. I've found it eventually but it was a version just before the feature I'm after was added. I tracked the author and they were great sport about cold emails bet didn't have the source any more.
So yes, please publish the code. You don't have to clean it up. It worked for the paper — it's good enough. Even the most terrible code is immeasurably better than no code.
As an example, I've found a paper that promises a method to do the very thing I want to accomplish. It's not too dense but it skips a few crucial moments and I've been working on coding the method for a year now (on and off, of course but still for a long time). If the code was available it probably wouldn't take as long. The paper didn't mention that the code was available upon request but it was implemented in a piece of software. I've found it eventually but it was a version just before the feature I'm after was added. I tracked the author and they were great sport about cold emails bet didn't have the source any more.
So yes, please publish the code. You don't have to clean it up. It worked for the paper — it's good enough. Even the most terrible code is immeasurably better than no code.