[work] cross

[trochee]

Not frustrated with the overall trajectory -- that's actually pretty interesting -- but the details of getting things done in a cross-continent, cross-platform collaboration are making me, well, cross. (Advisor in Germany, work I'm doing depends on Windows research software developed in Manhattan, target language is Chinese).

I wish it wasn't Windows. I wish it was supported. I wish it was documented. I wish that the interface wasn't a pop-up point-and-click (if I can't script it, it's irritating!). I wish I had the source (then it would probably not be Windows for long). I wish the system was robust to obvious user mistakes, instead of crashing with illegal memory accesses.

I wish it didn't crash when I ran it (or at least, that the crashes I get were reproducible in Manhattan). I wish the director of the New York group was actively working on fixing these problems. I wish I was doing research with my own software right now.

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

One of the research groups I'm eventually thinking of applying to work with produces a lot of software that all seems to be closed-source. I think this must get in the way of doing academic work so often, I wonder why they don't just go free and be done with it.