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Comment by saulrh | Hacker News Reader

Something I heard from one of my professors once: "A programmer alone has a good chance of getting a good job. A scientist alone has a good chance of getting a good job. A scientist that can program, or a programmer that can do science, is the most valuable person in the building."

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I'm finishing up a degree in Computational Science where we are essentially trained in computational and mathematical techniques used in the physical sciences, and all I can think about is becoming an artist.

I don't think it's the science that adds value, I think it's the programming. The thing is, programming allows you to automate, simulate, measure and visualize complex processes. Science is all about complex processes, so if you have more powerful tools available to understand them, you will be much more valuable. Add to that, many of the physical sciences are hitting limits of physical experimentation and require simulations for further understanding.

I don't think the power of programming has truly shown itself, it should revolutionize every industry. It brings with it a different attitude towards solving problems and opens up new realms of possibilities. Social sciences are finally starting to look like real science thanks to big data and we have new knowledge industries. I'm personally most interested in how much art and education will change thanks to new powers of interactivity.

If you are interested in programming and arts, why not have a look at computer games? (Or even modern board games, where the algorithms are run by the players themselves.)

I grew up interested in computer games, and I was lucky enough to TA a game design class at my university. I love the ability to create interactions, but my interest has recently turned to designing interactions into things that aren't normally interactive. I had a lot of fun making an interactive data visualization at a recent hackathon, and I'm hoping to do more things like that.

I personally think games and science need to get much closer together, interactive learning is so powerful, and video games can make anything fun. It's definitely something to explore, but there is still a huge divide between science and entertainment and the understanding of the people in each field.

Sounds like you may want to check out robotics.

Georgia Tech has a fun Mobile Robotics Lab, and there are several other places that you could study further. (You'll gain training in the actuators, sensors, etc you'd need for your artistic work).

I'll put in another plug for Robotics and Intelligent Machines @ Georgia Tech; that's where I am now.

http://robotics.gatech.edu/

Similarly, from Zed Shaw (http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html) :

"People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines."

This seems at odds with the statement from the article

"There needs to be a real shift in mindset away from worrying about how to get published in Nature and towards thinking about how to reward work that will be useful to the wider community."

EDIT: What the heck is wrong with this? We have two opinions on the perceived value of programmers in scientific enterprises, one from someone who works in the field (David Gavaghan) and another from Zed Shaw. I'm highlighting that Zed's perception is not universally agreed upon.

Dont feel too bad. HN has become full of people who believe that the correct response to something they disagree with is to mod down, instead of to reply with a rebuttal. It sucks, but others will mod you up.

This sentence strikes me as astonishingly hypocritical. Nature can immediately do 2 things to make the science they publish vastly more useful to the wider community:

1) Remove the paywall

2) Require publishing the code for computational papers (and the data for experimental papers)

Nature Group only cares about maintaining its status as a high impact factor journal, and scientists sheepishly submit to them. They actually love it that scientists worry about getting published in Nature.

get published in Nature = food on the table

useful to the wider community = warm fuzzy feeling

Ideally you'd get both, but if it's one or the other, for most people a full belly wins.

My experience is while they may be respected, they aren't paid. And I'm not a charity.

Nobody is paid for doing research. The salary of a professor is about 1/3-1/5 of what the same person may get in industry. People who do research don't do it for the money.

I agree with your point, but I'd add the modifier that if you're a top-notch developer who forms an interest in a specific sub-discipline in science (my field is genomics, but there are many others where this would be equally applicable), there is certainly huge potential to carve out a niche and make a big name for yourself in your chosen field (as long as you take the science side as seriously as the coding side). Then you certainly could make big money, as Shaw implies and as you'd surmise from reading the linked article.

Yeah, but you know who gets even more screwed, salary-wise, than the professor? I'll tell you who: their lab techs and staff scientists ("research associates"), and that most definitely includes the "programmer who knows some science".

Furthermore, at least at my institution, being the "programmer who knows some science" means that your position is entirely funded with "soft money", which means that your level of job security can be pretty low.

That's fair, but you know what those professors get? Tenure. ie not getting fired unless they're caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. And they typically get paid with hard money as stevenbedrick notes.

Everyone thinks they're underpaid, but the truth is, academic skills do not transfer well to industry. I refer you to the discussion in Ghostbusters:

"Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results."

This is also true in business. You should always remember that you're not just a developer or a programmer but that you're solving business problems. That's the only way to truly make yourself invaluable.

This is so true. I work in a research lab and I'm trying to interest myself more to the science and it's really helping my coding work. It's easier to improve software when you know what your users need.

I can attest to this.

That has not been my experience. I spent years working on DNA aligners then in a wetlab building software for confocal laser microscopy. In both locations, the best paid and most highly valued people were the scientists. If you, say, were a good developer with masters in stats and a strong understanding (somewhere between an undergrad and an MS) of the relevant science... you were paid 1/2 as much as you would be paid if you did computational advertising.

And yet there aren't many good developers doing science. Weird, huh?

Agreed that low salaries are a disincentive for good engineers to work in science. It's worth noting that even the scientists are paid far less than people with commensurate training and experience in industry.

As for why scientists are more highly valued: they bring in the grants that keep the wheels turning (in academic circles; industry & national labs obviously differ).

That's possible. I have a friend who works in the university aerospace lab that can read and write C and Matlab. His major contribution is being able to both understand the engineering and write code to manipulate it, and it's basically guaranteed himself a position there. He may not be valued quite as much as the PI or one of the other professors, but he's pretty solid.

I'd also cite myself, but I don't count since I'm in a robotics lab.

Which aligner(s) did you work on?

Sequence analysis companies and labs which don't value software engineering get what they pay for: serious or crippling inefficiencies and inability to do analysis on their data or maintain continuity. Unfortunately, many of them don't even realize what they need or how bad their inefficiencies are.

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