I have been involved with the E3SM development since I joined PNNL as a postdoc. Over the course of time, I have learnt a lot from the E3SM model. I also found many issues within the model, which reflects lots of similar struggles in the lifespan of software engineering.
Here I list a few major ones that we all dislike but they are around in almost every project we have worked on.
Excessive usage of existing framework even it is not meant to
Working in a large project means that you should NOT re-invent the wheels if they are already there. But more often, developers tend to use existing data types and functions even when they were not designed to do so. The reason is simple: it is easier to use existing ones than to create new ones. For example, in E3SM, there was not a data type to transfer data between river and land. Instead, developers use the data type designed for atmosphere and land to do the job. While it is ok to do so, it added unnecessary confusion for future development a…
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