The Pros and Cons of Computational Research

Pro: No dress code.
Shorts, open-toed shoes, socks and sandals, bare feet, long hair, hats, necklaces, watches, contacts, and banana costumes are all acceptable attire.

Con: No windows.
Because people can’t look into the lab and catch a glimpse of you professionally attired in a lab coat and safety glasses gazing thoughtfully into a test tube of blue liquid or intensely pipetting, you will most likely be placed in a basement office next to either the loading dock or a storage closet filled entirely with broken swivel chairs. [Our basement office actually has windows, but we’re below ground level and the ground around us was dug out so it feels like we’re at the bottom of a moat.]

Pro: Not fighting over spectrometers and beakers.
Some days, everyone just needs to run a reaction in a 100 mL round bottom flask and purify their compound using column chromatography. In computational research, everyone has their own computer.

Con: Fighting over computer cores on the lab allocation.
Everyone might have their own computer, but if you want to graduate before the next century, many of your simulations will be run on an external cluster. The cluster tends to be faster and you can have dozens of simulations running at the same time, unless that guy decides to run four 48-core jobs for two weeks on your lab’s 200-core allocation. Don’t be that guy.

Pro: Cluster maintenance.
A few times a year, depending on the computing department’s schedule, you get to go in to meetings with your advisor and say that you couldn’t get any results because the cluster is down for maintenance. Never mind that you’ve been warned three months in advance and could have planned data analysis, literature searches, writing manuscripts, preparing presentation slides, applying for grants, sending in conference applications, or any other of the dozens of things you never get around to doing to be completed during this time.

Con: No broken equipment.
If a vital component of the NMR machine suddenly breaks and the manufacturer insists that they’re working as quickly as they can, but the new part won’t be able to be installed for four months, well, guess you’re not doing NMR for the next four months. What a pity.

Pro: You can do your research anywhere, at any time.
Can’t be bothered to change out of your pajamas or get out of bed? Work from your bed. Forgot to submit some jobs to the cluster before you left work? Do it from home. Need to rearrange your schedule for doctor’s appointments, meetings, classes, or midday trips to the bar? Fine. Your source code doesn’t care if it’s 8 am or 8 pm.

Con: You can do your research anywhere, at any time.
Out of the country? Use a VPN to connect to the cluster. Broken leg? Doesn’t matter. You’re sitting all the time anyway. Broken arm? No big deal; your typing might be slowed down a bit but you can still use a mouse. Your only hope is a prolonged power outage.