Communications of the ACM

Highlighting the significance of the often overlooked underlying software used to produce research results.

Florina Ciorba

Finally, someone who hits the nail on the head. As a reviewer, I have always asked the "uncomfortable" questions regarding the software used to produce the results reported in the paper(s). Very few authors dignified these questions with answers, and not all of them were enlightening.
Reproducibility of experiments is what every scientist wants and fears at the same time. Those who are interested in experiments published in a paper by other researchers, most certainly would want to reproduce them, or leverage them for future work. After all, there is no point in "re-inventing the wheel". However, those that published the experiments, fear that reproducibility of their experiments would take away their vantage point on the specific topic and that they would be overcome by others who would be faster in producing new research results based on the reproduced experiments.
Here's hoping that this article raises & increases the awareness of the significance of the means (in this case the code) used to achieve the goal (in this case the research results) and reproducibility of any published research work & results.