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Comment by JohnnyBrown | Hacker News Reader

I'm working in biology now, and a good example of researchers who produce quality, documented code that other people find useful is the Knight group at UC Boulder. They write python with good docs and support, publish the algorithms they come up with in bioinformatics journals, and people cite them all the time.

Might be worth thinking about why there are incentives there and not elsewhere.

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That is an excellent example and a good point. But, for what it's worth, the Knight lab doesn't really do any biology. Most of their biology is done by collaboration with other labs, and the people in the lab are almost entirely programmers or database people. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's more an example of programmers getting into biology than the other way around.

Another place where good software work is done is Broad Institute. The reasons are as follows: (a) Broad can hire the best people in bioinformatics, (b) they are a relatively large organization where focusing on the process pays off. Software ultimately is process (i.e. how you do stuff) and small labs often cannot afford to focus on the process and instead try to reach the goal (i.e. publishable results) more or less directly, regardless of the inefficiencies they may encounter.

In the past, the model of having many small labs in universities was a great idea. Today things are looking a bit different in some fields because larger labs can afford to do more automation (by hiring programmers instead graduate students).

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