To me, it seems that many of the problems with producing reasonable code could be remedied by writing better code the first time. In my experience, writing somewhat less hacky code is usually not that much slower than writing completely hacky code. Moreover, it often saves time--there have been many occasions when I spent far longer dealing with a stupid bug than I would have writing cleaner code in the first place.
Now, learning to do this well does take some time. However, if you're going to be writing a fair bit of code, I think this time will more than pay for itself. The amount of effort you can save down the road by spending a little bit more time at the very beginning is not negligible.
So: I think researchers should try writing cleaner code (rather than cleaning up poorly written code at the end). I would not be surprised in the least if, after they've gotten used to it, they're actually more efficient than before!
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To me, it seems that many of the problems with producing reasonable code could be remedied by writing better code the first time. In my experience, writing somewhat less hacky code is usually not that much slower than writing completely hacky code. Moreover, it often saves time--there have been many occasions when I spent far longer dealing with a stupid bug than I would have writing cleaner code in the first place.
Now, learning to do this well does take some time. However, if you're going to be writing a fair bit of code, I think this time will more than pay for itself. The amount of effort you can save down the road by spending a little bit more time at the very beginning is not negligible.
So: I think researchers should try writing cleaner code (rather than cleaning up poorly written code at the end). I would not be surprised in the least if, after they've gotten used to it, they're actually more efficient than before!