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Comment by wrs | Hacker News Reader

>produce the high-performance codes that the machine learning community needs

Somewhat OT, but I've been wondering for a long time… Is the HPC community the only place the word "codes" is used like this? In usual CS parlance programming is done using a substance called "code" ("the high-performance code the community needs"), but in HPC literature the word "codes" is used, as if programming consisted of distinct objects. Does this arise from some divergent history (would I have called my LINPACK library punched card deck a "code"?) or what?

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Code is generally considered a mass noun among software engineers, but "codes" is pretty commonly used by academics, especially in other disciplines. In particular, physicists and mathematicians seem to use it pretty frequently, so that might explain why some in the HPC community use it as well.

I've also noticed that it seems more common among Europeans, but that might be just personal experience.

Also as in "simulation codes". I associate it with physicists and Fortran programs, rightly or wrongly.

code:codes::math:maths?

In the Commonwealth we say maths but we still say code.

I've noticed we also tend to also write "computer program" the US way, despite writing "TV programme".

Yup, British-educated here: programme for sequences of activities, program for the thing the computer runs... it’s just a little oddity I’ve noticed I’ve picked up and seem to be quite consistently applying.

Yep. Even though a computer program is... a sequence of activities.

Yes... and I use ”to programme” to denote the activity of planning activities, and ”to program” to indicate the process of coding instructions into a computer. I would probably use ”programme to program” if I ever had to discuss the idea of planning one’s intentions to issue instructions to a machine.

"Codes" tends to refer to error-correcting codes or encoding formats in my experience, while code refers to source or assembly code for machine execution.

One is a concept/idea/format while the other is a set of instructions.

Yes, this is just jargon specific to the HPC / numerical analysis field.

And not without meaning. HPC people hold themselves to higher standards than the average Joes throwing stuff at the currently-fashionable "continuous integration server" until the lights turn green. "Codes" are often things that have been proven, written on a legal pad, typed into the machine, and finally validated on a set of test problems. Could you prove that your program has second-order numerical stability? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_stability

A shining example of the Dunning–Kruger effect. Scientific code is some of the worst-engineered code you'll ever deal with because it's written by people that are great at physics but terrible at software engineering.

It will be poorly documented, have single letter var names everywhere without comments, have a bunch of hidden dependencies on whatever the postdoc had installed on his/her laptop, leak memory but 'terminate before it should be a problem', etc. Oh, and there will almost never be even a single regression test.

Sure, the underlying algorithm might have a nice proof of numerical stability, but the actual software is almost always trash until some poor soul has to re-engineer it if the software turns out to be useful.

Sure, the code is usually pretty ugly, but it also tends to work. The people who write it view software as just another tool, so they care more about working than looking pretty.

> Oh, and there will almost never be even a single regression test.

Bullshit. "Codes" tend to be run against analytical and/or experimental results.

It's not about looking pretty. It's about being composable, extendable, testable, and portable to other languages and architectures.

The fact that you think looking pretty has anything to do with sound software engineering further illustrates my point.

>Bullshit. "Codes" tend to be run against analytical and/or experimental results.

A README that says the author ran it against dataset Y and got X is not a regression test. I'm talking about automated tests run on every proposed patch to ensure the thing is never broken. Real automated tests that cover 90%+ of branches are about as rare as unicorns in scientific computing (much to my annoyance).

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why people running experiments skip testing (fast iteration). But that leads to the very opposite of "higher standards".

Whenever I read or that, I assume it was a language issue. As a native English speaker "codes" sounds like a mistake.

It’s common in Indian English, as in “I have written a code to do the needful, but I have a doubt about it that perhaps you could answer.” Outside that dialect I’d call it an error.

I've seen and heard 'codes' in scientific computing, but nowhere else. Seems to support your hypothesis

In computational acoustics, I've seen "codes" used more commonly, especially by those who started out in the punchcard days.

punchcards .. days .. ouch that's painful :)

I started working with HPC users three years ago and yes, they're the only ones who used "codes" that way.

At least, the only ones in the last 30 years, I'm figuring - there is a reason we call it "code", and it's an old one!

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