I agree, but.......... (David Sexton, 12 June 2012)

I agree with most of what you are saying, but many of the issues around code reuse and documentation are a problem of time. There are too few bioinformatician hired, the key word is hired, at most institutions. This means that most bioinformaticians are seriously over committed and are looking for easy (cheap) ways to complete work before they are yelled at by the PI. PIs do not understand software development AT ALL and if you do not have someone who can stand up and explain it, then these issues will continue. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "What do you mean that you need 4 weeks to properly analyze that data? I have the paper going out in 2 weeks" or "How can it take 6 months to develop a pipeline? I could get a grad student to do it in 2 weeks." The other refrain I... read full comment

Comment on: Corpas et al. Source Code for Biology and Medicine, 7:3