jballanc

A quick bit of background: I have a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology and published a peer-reviewed paper on my thesis topic when I was in grad school. Then, I went to work as a software engineer.

Now, since leaving academia, I have by no means lost interest in science. If anything, I've followed the world of research with as much interest and attention as ever and, because I no longer have to play the perpetual game of one-upmanship that pervades academic departments, I have been free to spread my interest around to more diverse topics. It's been rather freeing.

At the same time, my paycheck depends on delivering code, and so I've delivered code and not academic papers. Then, something interesting happened: I splurged on a Claude subscription and suddenly I have the most attentive research assistant I could have imagined all without the need for an academic department or drawn-out grant proposal process.

The only hurdle remaining is: where should I publish? Unfortunately, as I don't have an academic affiliation, I cannot get automatic access to publish to arXiv (and anyone I know who could endorse me is focused in on the biological sciences subjects from my time in grad school, not cs.LG). I've thought about simply posting to GitHub and linking from my personal site, but I worry if that's enough to establish priority and/or garner real critique and feedback.

I'm contemplating PLOS One, but I don't know the ML community well enough to know if that's an appropriate venue? Any help on how to re-enter the world of scientific publishing (in a new area) would be much appreciated!

The last 12-18 months or so I've started to realize that I'm having a harder time reviewing code, especially if that code is from a stranger (e.g. on an OSS project) or a new colleague.

I find that I will take a first glance at the code, notice the inclusion of some more advanced concept or technique, and instinctually I'll assume the code is the product of a more seasoned developer. Then, quite often, I'll come across something in the code that doesn't make sense. My initial reaction is to assume the author of this code is using some new technique or approach I'm not familiar with. I'll dig and search and turn myself inside out trying to figure out what I'm missing...only to eventually come to the conclusion that I haven't actually missed anything.

No, the reason the code didn't make sense to me is because the code just...doesn't make sense. It was not the product of some seasoned developer, but rather of a junior developer who has simply made a series of run-of-the-mill junior-developer-mistakes. In the past I would have been able to pick these sorts of mistakes out from a mile away. Now I find I have to see past the patina of pseudo-sophisticated LLM-generated code first before I can start the review process.