i'm in a similar position to you (although i started out as an academic i've worked in the software industry for ages and so end up helping my astronomer partner).
anyway, i disagree slightly with your analysis. in my experience academics know that they suck at the "engineering" part and, to make up for it, are very diligent in making sure that the results "feel right". so i don't think what you described was luck - that's how they work.
in comparison, what drives me crazy, is that if they learnt to use a few basic tools (scm, libraries, an ide, simple test framework) they could save so much time and frustration.
[related anecdote: last year i rewrote some c code written by a grad student that was taking about 24 hours to run. my python translation finished in 15 minutes and gave the same answer each time it was run (something of a novelty, apparently)].
anyway, i disagree slightly with your analysis. in my experience academics know that they suck at the "engineering" part and, to make up for it, are very diligent in making sure that the results "feel right". so i don't think what you described was luck - that's how they work.
in comparison, what drives me crazy, is that if they learnt to use a few basic tools (scm, libraries, an ide, simple test framework) they could save so much time and frustration.
[related anecdote: last year i rewrote some c code written by a grad student that was taking about 24 hours to run. my python translation finished in 15 minutes and gave the same answer each time it was run (something of a novelty, apparently)].