- <h2>Summing Up</h2>
-
- <p>
- Correlation does not imply causality,
- but there is a very strong correlation between
- using version control
- and doing good computational science.
- There's an equally strong correlation
- between <em>not</em> using it and wasting effort,
- so today (the middle of 2012),
- I will not review a paper if the software used in it
- is not under version control.
- Its authors' work might be interesting,
- but without the kind of record-keeping that version control provides,
- there's no way to know exactly what they did and when.
- Just as importantly,
- if someone doesn't know enough about computing to use version control,
- the odds are good that they don't know enough
- to do the programming right either.
- </p>
+ <p>
+ Correlation does not imply causality,
+ but there is a very strong correlation between
+ using version control
+ and doing good computational science.
+ There's an equally strong correlation
+ between <em>not</em> using it and either wasting effort or getting things wrong.
+ Today (the middle of 2013),
+ I will not review a paper if the software used in it
+ is not under version control.
+ The work it reports might be interesting,
+ but without the kind of record-keeping that version control provides,
+ there's no way to know exactly what its authors did.
+ Just as importantly,
+ if someone doesn't know enough about computing to use version control,
+ the odds are good that they don't know enough
+ to do the programming right either.
+ </p>