242
votes
How can a TA help a student who is certain she sucks at programming?
When you tell her that she doesn't suck at programming, all she hears is that you don't understand how bad she sucks. The psychology is the important thing here, not pedagogy. If I were in your ...
- 7,832
237
votes
Advisor professor asks for my dissertation research source code
One of the reasons Science has been so successful is that scientists treat knowledge and tools as public goods. We don't hoard knowledge, but rather we write papers, share techniques, offer ...
- 10.3k
237
votes
Outsourcing trivial authorless work
The fact that to a seasoned programmer the work is easy doesn't have anything to do with it. As you describe it, this is work that's required for the publication. Without it, you don't have a paper. ...
- 13.4k
183
votes
Is publishing runnable code instead of pseudo code shunned?
There are cases where real code is preferable, and cases where pseudocode is preferable. You shouldn't rely on a simple iron rule, but rather on judgement of what is appropriate to the situation.
...
- 5,616
121
votes
Accepted
Is it OK to update code on repository after publication?
Absolutely yes! There is no reason to stop a project from evolving just because you've published about it.
What would be good to do, however, is to identify the version current at the time of ...
- 187k
106
votes
Will a paper be retracted if a flaw in released software code invalidates its central idea?
If the main idea in the paper has been invalidated by the correction in the code, you would do well to try to retract the paper yourself. This is just a point of professional ethics. It also protects ...
- 344k
104
votes
Is there any way to post my code on Code Review Stack Exchange and not be worried about plagiarism?
In addition to all the good answers you received so far, I should also point out that in general people's fear of being unethically scooped is vastly exaggerated. I would imagine that there really isn'...
- 135k
103
votes
During peer-review, should I comment on the authors' messy code?
If the authors have provided a link to their code as a reference, then it is appropriate to offer commentary, particularly if the article is based on the code.
However, I would recommend making the ...
- 173k
99
votes
Accepted
Academic code copied by library author
In fact something great happened: Your research did have impact in the real world and seems to be useful - not everyone can say that!
When it comes to legal issues, things are usually complicated and ...
- 13.1k
86
votes
Advisor professor asks for my dissertation research source code
Ideally in this situation you would make your program publicly available.
Giving others access to this code does not prevent you from using it, and will help you build reputation within your field.
...
- 1,282
80
votes
Accepted
Teaching a blind student MATLAB programming
Yes, this is all possible, but I recommend seeking specialist advice. Blind support organisations often have technical advisors who are aware of the latest software and hardware adaptions that are ...
- 16.9k
78
votes
Accepted
Is it acceptable to use Mathematica to derive results in your research?
Is it okay to use Mathematica to solve the integration and use the result in my research?
Of course it is.
It might be useful, though, to make the Mathematica code employed for the calculations ...
- 55.3k
75
votes
I wrote the code based on a paper's methodology; are there any legal problems with making it open source?
You are not required to get permission to implement an idea you have read about in a paper, or to make it open source.
The paper is protected by copyright, but this only protects the text and images ...
- 109k
75
votes
Advisor professor asks for my dissertation research source code
As someone who works in scientific computing, I agree with what others say, and would likely take it a step further. To put it hyperbolicly:
Refusing reasonable requests to code used in a published ...
- 5,234
75
votes
Accepted
I have found a mistake on someone's code published online: what is the protocol?
Now that I have found the problem what is the protocol for highlighting this, is emailing the author necessary?
It isn't necessary, but it is the right thing to do, if you don't, you're responsible ...
- 40.6k
72
votes
Advisor professor asks for my dissertation research source code
If you wrote the code as part of your work as a PhD candidate, and were at all considered an employee of the institution as a PhD candidate, then the institution may well own intellectual property ...
- 1,413
67
votes
Accepted
Double blind peer review when paper cites author's GitHub repo for code
Censor out the repo's name, and provide code to the referees as an auxiliary file.
- 45.8k
56
votes
How can a TA help a student who is certain she sucks at programming?
About her not wanting to work with her team mate -- she may have some fears such as:
that she'll feel embarrassed in front of her team mate
that she'll rely too much on the team mate's competence
...
- 39k
56
votes
Why say source code is available with an ArXiv paper when it is not?
There is no advantage to claiming the source code is available and then not doing that. All it will achieve is irritating the really interested readers.
The most likely reason is it’s a simple mistake....
- 41.8k
56
votes
How much technical / debugging help should I expect my advisor to provide?
Your supervisor is correct. Most supervisors don't help at this level of detail. You have some options: take a class in that particular programming language/stats software (sometimes there are things ...
- 15.8k
53
votes
I have found a mistake on someone's code published online: what is the protocol?
An important point of etiquette that has been skipped in the other answers:
Treat it as a suspected bug, and do not assume "I'm right, you're wrong" while presenting your fix.
No matter how ...
- 601
53
votes
Accepted
How do you manage to study and have a balance in your life at the same time?
Yes, it matters that you are in grade 9. It is probably a good thing that you are able to do what you like to do (math and computing), but it seems too early to focus yourself quite so much on narrow ...
- 344k
53
votes
Is publishing runnable code instead of pseudo code shunned?
In my research, I often write algorithms, which may contains statements like:
Find a dominant subspace of a given hermitian matrix A with relative accuracy Ɛ.
Find a nonnegative solution of this ...
- 53.6k
52
votes
Is it acceptable to use Mathematica to derive results in your research?
I take this question as not specific to Mathematica, but equally relevant to any other computer algebra system.
You have an integral or an equation that you cannot solve. You have a piece of ...
- 2,161
51
votes
My code is published as original work by a different group. What should I do?
This seems to be a clear case of plagiarism, and potentially a copyright violation.
The BSD license contains a line "Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list ...
- 8,182
51
votes
Accepted
Can one demand to see code used to generate an article?
I believe you are asking the wrong question.
You are asking: Can one demand to see code used to generate an article?
To which I would answer: Assuming you're in a country with free speech, you can "...
- 13.9k
47
votes
Accepted
GitHub repository ownership as a PhD student in a lab
It's fairly common for labs to have GitHub organizations. There are multiple reasons for this.
First of all, it doesn't prevent the authors from getting credit. The commits will be shown as commits ...
- 14.8k
47
votes
Accepted
Tutoring Unfamiliar Material
Things seem to be working so far: the student is happy with your mentoring and teaching style. As long as they (and whoever is paying you) are aware that you are not an expert in this specific topic, ...
- 2,182
46
votes
During peer-review, should I comment on the authors' messy code?
The code is within the scope of the review, and it is appropriate to review this and offer constructive suggestions in relation to its deficiencies. Now, bear in mind that the onus is on the author ...
- 64k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible