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Any tips to help a scientist become a better programmer?
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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Programming
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As a researcher: all the professional software engineers here have no idea about the requirements for code in a research setting.
I recommend you use
As someone with extensive experience in both: my first requirement would be readability. Single python file? Fine with that. 1k+ lines single python file without functions or other means of structuring the code: please no.
The nice thing about python is that your IDE let's you jump into the code of the libraries you're using, I find that to be a good way to look at how experienced python devs write code.
You can jump to definition in any language. In fact, python may be one of the worst ones, because compiled libraries are so common. "Real signature unknown" is all you will get some times. E.g. Numpy is implemented in C not python.
My point about the jumping into was that you can immediately start reading the sources. Most alternative languages are compiled in some form or other so all you'll see is an API, not the implementation.
My comment was not asking for clarification, I am contradicting your claim.
Granted, my experience is mostly limited to python and rust. But I find that in python you reach the end of "jump to definition" much much sooner. Fundamental core libraries of Python are written in C, simply because the performance required cannot be reached with python alone. So after jumping two levels you are through the thin wrapper type and your compiler will give you an "I don't know, it's byte code".
In Rust I have yet to encounter this. Byte code is rarely used as a dependency, because compiling whatever is needed is no issue - you're compiling anyway - and actually can allow a few more optimizations to be performed.
Edit: since wasm is not yet wide spread, JavaScript may be the best language to dig deep into libraries.
Mostly ML or data processing libraries I would assume, I've read tons of REST server and ORM python code for instance, none of that is written in C.
Wrt rust: no experience with that. I do do a lot of C++, there you quickly reach the end as typically you're consuming quite a bit of libraries but the complete sources of those aren't part of what is parsed by the IDE as keeping all that in memory would be unworkable.
Fair enough, that can be achieved with pure python.