I concluded a long time ago that most of the content of a modern paper is simply unnecessary. The joke often goes: "I only read the abstract and conclusions, and if they agree with mine, I check the methods to see if there's any trick I haven't learned yet".
In many cases, a paper I read could be replaced with a decent github repo to hold a README.md that explains what the repo does, source code that implements the scientific discovery (does not apply to lab experiments) and an S3 bucket to hold the raw data.
A unit test/system test should ensure that the code builds periodically (many codes fail over time as dependencies change) and passes basic statistical tests; ideally, it would produce the entire final data set and the analysis.
in the meantime, I just ask Gemini to do that step for me. It does a remarkable job turning papers into code.
jltsiren•4mo ago
Most of the content of most papers is irrelevant to most readers. But the relevant parts would often not exist without the rest.
Writing is a way of thinking. Writing a coherent self-contained narrative often makes you understand the topic better. And a full rewrite after a couple of years, with clarified terminology and concepts, improves your understanding further.
dekhn•4mo ago
In many cases, a paper I read could be replaced with a decent github repo to hold a README.md that explains what the repo does, source code that implements the scientific discovery (does not apply to lab experiments) and an S3 bucket to hold the raw data.
A unit test/system test should ensure that the code builds periodically (many codes fail over time as dependencies change) and passes basic statistical tests; ideally, it would produce the entire final data set and the analysis.
in the meantime, I just ask Gemini to do that step for me. It does a remarkable job turning papers into code.
jltsiren•4mo ago
Writing is a way of thinking. Writing a coherent self-contained narrative often makes you understand the topic better. And a full rewrite after a couple of years, with clarified terminology and concepts, improves your understanding further.