May 12, 2026 In reply to an email asking about learning software design skills as a researcher physicist: I was attached to a bioinformatics lab early in my career, so I think I understand what you are talking about, the phenomenon of “scientific code”! My thoughts: First meta observation is that “software design” is something best learned by doing. While I had some formal “design” courses at the University, and I was even “an architect” for our course project, that stuff was mostly make-believe, kindergarteners playing fire-fighters. What really taught me how to do stuff was an accident of my career, where my second real project ( IntelliJ Rust ) propelled me to a position of software leadership, and made design my problem. I did make a few mistakes in IJ Rust, but nothing too horrible, and I learned a lot. So that’s good news — software engineering is simple enough that an inquisitive mind can figure it out from first principles (and reading random blog posts).…