The enlightenment of Professor Bigglesnot

An enthusiastic “Yippee!” echoed down the corridor. so loud it woke several faculty members in
nearby offices. Some even got up out of their chairs and looked up and down the hallway before
returning to grading or research or freecell before falling asleep again. But Bigglesnot was excited.
After all, computing automorphism semigroups of quantum hyperalgebras was his life’s passion, ever since he was a graduate student. In front of him, was the latest issue of the Quantum Hyperalgebra Journal, newly released from its plastic shrink-wrap. It was opened to the article which was the focus of Bigglesnot’s attention – the esteemed Ziggotwat’s discussion of a new algorithm to compute automorphism semigroups of quantum hyperalgebras. Bigglesnot could see immediately from the tables of new data presented that Ziggotwat’s implementation was faster, better and more general than his own program. Whispering “Awesome! Awesome! So, awesome! …” under his breath, he shot off an email to Ziggotwat asking for more information, and, if at all possible, further details on the implementation. Could he please post or email the code, for others to look at? That would be awesome!

Days and weeks went by, but with no reply. One morning B found an email from Z: “…the code needs to be cleaned up first …”, “… so sorry for the late reply …”, but “.. thanks for your interest!”, was the gist. As luck would have it, B spotted Z a few weeks later at the annual meeting of the Society of Quantum Hyperalgebraists. Undaunted, one night after the talks of the meeting were finished, B bombarded Z with free beer and flattery peppered with questions about his program. “In fact”, Z finally confessed, “all the work was done by my former student Pipperpop, who has graduated and does not reply to my emails. I can send you what I have – but no promises!” Drunk, but now estatic, Bigglesnot managed to say “Awesome!” before he fell off his barstool.

In the months that followed, B pored through the incomplete, undocumented code. It was provided as a sequence of files, each one seeming dependent on another. They wouldn’t compile, no matter how B tried. Each day for a month, after attending to his classes, B would try to modify one of the files, hoping that a small change would allow him to compile the files into a functioning program. Each day, he would draft an email to Z (or to P, or to the editor of QHJ) asking what kind of LSD was he tripping on to make him high enough to think this mess of code would ever compile?
And each day, he wisely deleted the draft. Bigglesnot, usually filled to overflowing with self-confidence, was defeated.

Finally, B realized the solution! Not the solution of to how to compile Pipperpop’s poop, but the solution to the general problem. Software computations submitted to scientific journals must be “open” – if scientific data obtained as a result of a software computation is part of research paper submitted for publication then the source code for that software must also be made public and verified before publication. Enlightened, Bigglesnot was optimistic once again.

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This postwas inspired by the excellent paper: Pederson, Empiricism is Not a Matter of Faith, Computational Linguistics, Volume 34, Number 3, pp. 465-470, September 2008.
http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse/full-pubs.html