HACKER Q&A
📣 Eugeleo

Best practices for research code?


Writing research code (in my case ML/AI) is very different to writing production code. The goals are different, and thus so are the best practices, patterns, and values.

What's your favorite resource on how to write code in research? What are the research-code-specific equivalents of Rich Hickey's talks or SPJ's posts or the many many SWE blogposts posted to HN?


  👤 elasticventures Accepted Answer ✓
for llm's it's a github repo - spec driven development prompt or skill with a "WIP" (work in progress) status and a broad context summary with instructions to chunk the document.

👤 softwaredoug
I feel like SWE skills are underappreciated in research code. I've seen a lot of bugs creep in due to poor design or bad testing practices. Leading to the wrong conclusions. Not to mention that its harder for readers to consume if its unreadable code.

Researchers that think their code is "throwaway" dramatically limit their reach.