As bad as corporate software may be, academic software is usually worse. I’ve worked in industry and in academia and have seen first-hand how mu

Buggy code is biased code

submited by

Style Pass

2024-11-16 17:00:06

As bad as corporate software may be, academic software is usually worse. I’ve worked in industry and in academia and have seen first-hand how much lower the quality bar is in academia. And I’m not the only one who has noticed this.

Why does this matter? Because buggy code is biased code. Bugs that cause the software to give unwanted results are more likely to be noticed and fixed. Bugs that cause software to produce expected results are more likely to remain in place.

If your software simulates some complex phenomena, you don’t know what it’s supposed to do; that’s why you’re simulating. Errors are easier to spot in consumer software. A climate model needs a higher level of quality assurance than a word processor because bugs in the latter are more obvious. Genomic analysis may contain egregious errors and no one ever know, but a bug in an MP3 player is sure to annoy users.