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\begin{document}

\title{Physicists can code}


\author{Alberto Pepe}
\affil{Affiliation not available}



\date{\today}

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So this happened. At a startup pitch event in Santa Monica last week,
one investor asked us:

\begin{quote}
\emph{how did you guys manage to build the codebase for Authorea since
you're all physicists?}\\
\end{quote}

The answer is that physicists write code too. Ha! And as a matter of
fact, it is not only physicists. Also most computational biologists and
medical researchers and virtually any scholar who works with data, in
some way, will learn to code. Yes, even psychologists, social
scientists, and digital humanists.~

I don't think that being a physicist gives you a passport for being a
great developer (I am not, for example), but there are some very basic
characteristics of physicists that are important to point out.

\textbf{Why do physicists make potentially good developers? ~}

\begin{enumerate}
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\item
  mathematical knowledge\\
\item
  a passion for solving complex systems\\
\item
  the ability to work in a team, as most physics work involves large
  collaborations\\
\item
  experience of basic programming languages (such as C\#)\\
\item
  computer science is just \href{https://xkcd.com/793/}{a special case
  of physics}~anyway :)\\
\end{enumerate}

Re point 4: it is true that most physicists will not learn or use Ruby
on Rails or Javascript for their Ph.D. work. To build a website or an
app, your knowledge of Fortran
(\href{https://www.quora.com/How-can-one-encourage-physicists-to-adopt-newer-programming-languages-and-techniques}{still
wildly popular among astronomers!}) will not really help. But by
default, most physicists will learn C\# or C++, as well as basic
database languages, and HTML/CSS. Moreover, nearly all physicists (and
astronomers) will compile their papers in LaTeX, which is, after all, a
programming language? The next generation of physicists
(\href{https://www.authorea.com/users/3/articles/5287/_show_article}{some
of whom are increasingly becoming data scientists}) is more familiar
than ever with Python and Javascript (e.g. d3.js). My view is that the
gap between the computational skills of a computer scientists and a
physicist is getting more and more narrow, as we enter an age where all
of physics research requires data handling and computation.
\textbf{Physicists can code.}

\par\null

\textbf{Our story}

For the record, Authorea was mostly built by physicists. My background
is in Astronomy and Information Science and Nate's in Physics (Condensed
Matter). Matteo, who has been involved since day one, is still a
full-time Astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
where he researches stellar interiors. Before starting Authorea we were
all familiar with Python (as well as R, Mathematica, IDL, and yes,
Fortran). Nate decided to use Ruby on Rails to build Authorea and we
couldn't be happier with that decision. Also, we all had to learn Ruby
on Rails from scratch. The members of our fantastic team - Deyan, Alec,
Neel, Tanya, David, and Jace - all have graduate degrees in Physics. Ok,
that's a lie. Deyan is a computer scientist but he took a class in
Quantum Computing once, so he's excused.

\par\null

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