As a professional software engineer with a CS degree working in bio-informatics, I've had to deal with far too many brilliant scientists (but not computer scientists) who like to program.
They are without question brilliant people, but the code they produce is like the code I remember from the worst cs students from my days as a CS tutor.
A great mind with no formal programming training can code - but oh the horror, the horror...
As a professional software engineer, turned professional biochemist, turned back into a professional software engineer, I can assure you that the grass is always greener in the other profession. ;-)
The video games industry is full of physicists that for one reason or another though their programming module qualified them to become a coder... I share your horror.
I've seen Chemistry PhDs try to store the rational numbers in a database.
Yes that meant that 99% of the database entries were Null.
No they didn't know what a "one to many" relationship is.
No they didn't realize or care that anything compared with Null is neither True nor False but Null.
Sure there was a way to get what they wanted with no Nulls and a database the fraction of the size, but they didn't care, they had PhDs.
They are without question brilliant people, but the code they produce is like the code I remember from the worst cs students from my days as a CS tutor.
A great mind with no formal programming training can code - but oh the horror, the horror...