I work in an R&D environment with a lot of people from scientific backgrounds who have picked up some programming but aren't software people at heart. I couldn't agree more with your assessment, and I say that without any disrespect to their competence. (Though, perhaps with some frustration for having to deal with bad code!)
As ever, the best work comes when you're able to have a tight collaboration between a domain expert and a maintainability-minded person. This requires humility from both: the expert must see that writing good software is valuable and not an afterthought, and the developer must appreciate that the expert knows more about what's relevant or important than them.
> As ever, the best work comes when you're able to have a tight collaboration between a domain expert and a maintainability-minded person. This requires humility from both: the expert must see that writing good software is valuable and not an afterthought, and the developer must appreciate that the expert knows more about what's relevant or important than them.
I do work in such an environment (though in some industry, and not in academia).
An important problem in my opinion is that many "many software-minded people" have a very different way of using a computer than typical users, and are always learning/thinking about new things, while the typical user has a much less willingness to be permanently learning (both in their subject matter area and computers).
So, the differences in the mindsets and usage of computers are in my opinion much larger than your post suggest. What you list are in my experience differences that are much easier to resolve, and - if both sides are open - not really a problem practice.
As ever, the best work comes when you're able to have a tight collaboration between a domain expert and a maintainability-minded person. This requires humility from both: the expert must see that writing good software is valuable and not an afterthought, and the developer must appreciate that the expert knows more about what's relevant or important than them.