You raise some really good points Remi.
So my question then would be, how does the community incentivize change?
While it does seem like a lot of work and there aren't enough programmers to make it happen overnight, I have to say that I'm alarmed at the idea of it being justification for keeping SPM a black box. I firmly believe we shouldn't just understand our tools at a button pressing level. Rather there should be active efforts to know what the buttons we press are doing not just at a conceptual/hand-waving level but (at least to some extent) an implementation level. It makes the community less fragile to bugs, fosters more confidence in results generated, and creates more fertile ground for the development of future algorithms.
Making the code accessible is a necessary step. Change doesn't have to happen all at once, but perhaps making a commitment to move in that direction is enough. Something as simple as a published set of code/documentation standards moving forward seem like would go a long way as a catalyst.
I would appreciate if the SPM team could chime in on this. What would it take to make the code more readable/better documented? How willing/able (and to what extent) is the SPM team to aide in that? What could the community's hypothetical role in that be? Is this something we should be talking about?
~Meg
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