The BBC on the computer programming used by the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit

John Graham-Cumming strikes as a straight shooter. He both criticizes and defends parts of their programming. Here are the links to the last three posts that he has put up on his blog.

Whoops. There's a third bug in that code.

We should probably feel sorry for Ian 'Harry' Harris at CRU

Reading through the code and then through his HARRY_READ_ME.TXT you can see a man up against something that was slightly outside his ability. I don't mean that in a nasty way; what was needed was a professional programmer and not a professional scientist.

In the midst of the file we find the following plaintive exclamations:

Something is very poorly. It's my programming skills, isn't it.

and

So, once again I don't understand statistics. Quel surprise, given that

I haven't had any training in stats in my entire life, unless you count

A-level maths.

and

and.. yup, my awful programming strikes again.

and

So, good news - but only in the sense that I've found the error.

Bad news in that it's a further confirmation that my abilities are

short of what's required here.

Bugs in the software flash the message 'Something's out there'

The more I look at the software used by the folks at CRU, the more I think: "these guys seriously need to hire a professional programmer." The code is mostly an undocumented, untested tangled mess of little programs. Ugh.

Oh, and it's buggy. . . .

abudzar