Yes, this is just jargon specific to the HPC / numerical analysis field.
It will be poorly documented, have single letter var names everywhere without comments, have a bunch of hidden dependencies on whatever the postdoc had installed on his/her laptop, leak memory but 'terminate before it should be a problem', etc. Oh, and there will almost never be even a single regression test.
Sure, the underlying algorithm might have a nice proof of numerical stability, but the actual software is almost always trash until some poor soul has to re-engineer it if the software turns out to be useful.
> Oh, and there will almost never be even a single regression test.
Bullshit. "Codes" tend to be run against analytical and/or experimental results.
The fact that you think looking pretty has anything to do with sound software engineering further illustrates my point.
>Bullshit. "Codes" tend to be run against analytical and/or experimental results.
A README that says the author ran it against dataset Y and got X is not a regression test. I'm talking about automated tests run on every proposed patch to ensure the thing is never broken. Real automated tests that cover 90%+ of branches are about as rare as unicorns in scientific computing (much to my annoyance).
Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why people running experiments skip testing (fast iteration). But that leads to the very opposite of "higher standards".