&gt; most of them are actually pretty good programmers.<p>What is &#x27;good&#x27;? In &#x27;software development&#x27; &#x27;good&#x27; is usually connected to writing clear, maintainable, test covered code. In most scientific research it means something completely different. I think on HN most adhere to the former definition of good and in that sense most researchers (especially in physics, but also CS &#x2F; ML) are not &#x27;good&#x27; according to that definition (because you need quite a lot of years of experience in a corporate setting usually) and actually even bad. But the code works <i>and</i> implements the concepts in their papers so they are &#x27;good&#x27; in that respect. That is more rapid prototyping to make a POC to show it works, after which you properly rewrite it.