Beyond Software Carpentry

Abstract

About 20 years ago the need for scientists and engineers to have basic knowledge of software development skills and tools became apparent. Without these so-called software carpentry skills, developers were wasting time and compromising the quality of their work. Since that time great progress has been made with software carpentry, as evidenced by the growing understanding of the importance of tools, and by the growth of the namesake Software Carpentry foundation and other similar projects. With scientific software developers now prepared to move forward, we should turn our attention to the next logical step after carpentry: Software Engineering (SE) applied to Scientific Computing Software (SCS). Past attempts with SE for SCS have not always been successful; therefore, this paper proposes a vision for future success, including SE specifically adapting ideas to SCS, SCS recognizing the value of software artifacts other than the code, and all parties increasing the emphasis on empirical evidence and the quality of replicability. Several ideas are proposed for turning the proposed vision into a reality, including promoting requirements documentation for replicability, building assurance cases for correctness (and other qualities), and automatic generation of all documentation and code.