ARSIS · FIELD NOTES                                   N° 2009-001
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Specimen   Julien Barbe, developer
Habitat    higher education, biodiversity data, plant identification
loc.       Montpellier, France
leg.       2009 — lead developer, Pl@ntNet (INRA)
           2015 — independent
det.       "Every field runs on unwritten rules. I give them shape."
notes      arsis.dev — opening soon

A few of the rules I had to write down:

Higher education. Every exception to the rules has a student's name on it.

Admissions. "Complete application" means one thing to the candidate, another to the school, and a third to the payment system.

Botany. A name is a hypothesis; the specimen is the evidence. Never overwrite a determination: add a new one.

Forest data. The plot is the unit, not the tree. Split by tree and your model learns the forest by heart.

Trails. Nobody asks for 42 km. They ask for a loop that brings them home before lunch, without riding the same road twice.

Working time. Everyone remembers where they meant their day to go. Only the machine remembers where it went.

Legacy code. Every odd line in an old application was once someone's emergency. Find out whose before deleting it.

Software. Clients rarely know exactly what they need. That is not their failing; it is the job.