On 04/01/15 21:28, Sturla Molden wrote:
A scientific paper or thesis should be written so it is completely reproducible. That would include describing the computer, OS, Python version and NumPy version, as well as C or Fortran compiler.
I completely agree and we should all work towards this goal. But we aren't there yet. Most of the scientific community is just beginning to realize that there is a problem. Anyone writing scientific software for use in today's environment has to take this into account. More importantly, there is not only the technical problem of reproducibility, but also the meta-level problem of human understanding. Scientific communication depends more and more on scripts as the only precise documentation of a computational method. Our programming languages are becoming a major form of scientific notation, alongside traditional mathematics. Humans don't read written text with version numbers in mind. This is a vast problem which can't be solved merely by "fixing" software technology, but it's something to keep in mind nevertheless when writing software. For those interested in this aspect, I have written a much more detailed account in a recent paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.3978.2 Konrad.