TL;DR I claim that modern science is synonymous with open source software. This post explains why, why it matters, and what you can (and should) do next. Why do you care about (open source) software? - Everyone I spend a lot of my time working on software. I have been asked why software matters more times than I can remember. Software is, people say, not science. It’s a time sink, something to rush past in the pursuit of what really matters: results (and papers if you’re in academia). Publish or perish. Well. I think software matters. In fact, I think open source software is science. Or, at least computational science. And this post tells you why. Why we as scientists must insist on the scientific method and why that means working on open and reproducible software. This post is not easy to write. It challenges many of the current trends in academia, but it is an important move towards better science that doesn’t turn us all insane . What is science?…