While a good point, at the moment the balance is much more shifted towards dead media rather than wasted resources. At best, the document doesn't get as much engagement as it could. At worst you get non-reproducible research papers, when you're really lucky if you can find the code in open access and compile it, let alone get the same results.
And sure, some simulations are very heavy, but they are more of exceptions. Also possible to have the best of both worlds, and have both a simulation, and a static snapshot available.
Often it’s the first step to reproducibility though. Am enormous amount of scientific effort is figuring out how a researcher did something they published.
Basically adding another whole project on top of the other project this way.
Imagine trying to figure out some 2001 JS paper thing for ex. But applied to every generation of technical development.
There’s always standards of course but we’ve seen those go sideways enough time to make one cringe at the thought of ‘dynamic papers’ via some new medium.
The kind of thing that sounds amazing on the surface then you remember the sort of crazy IT depts that thousands of universities run and forget the whole thing.
> Often it’s the first step to reproducibility though.
It shouldn't be! Reproduction needs to involve the interaction of human brain meats with a human level description of the solution. This is how we make sure that people aren't talking about something different than what was actually done, and how we make sure our conclusions are robust against the things we've failed to specify.
Imagine saying the same thing for physics: I start replication by running a time machine and using the same apparatus as the original experiment under the same conditions. Impracticality aside, this would be potentially useful to suss out fraud and certain kinds of errors, but what successful replication tells is is manifestly less powerful than successful replication on a new apparatus in a new location at a new time, with new values for everything we've failed to control.
And sure, some simulations are very heavy, but they are more of exceptions. Also possible to have the best of both worlds, and have both a simulation, and a static snapshot available.