> Making reproducible workflows as a non-developer can be nearly impossible in some cases.
Why is that the case? Size?
I am very familiar with dealing with old proprietary things that have to be fought tooth and nail to give you a simple text format, but that doesn't seem to be nearly the scale of trouble as you describe.
Old proprietary things can definitely be part of the problem. A lot of people will just cut and paste various scripts, download various packages, and make random edits until things work. I can't blame them. These things can be hard and for those not from a computer science background, it can be difficult to comprehend how things actually work.
Just getting old software to compile can be a challenge in itself. You could say to just put everything in a Docker container. Then when you have it working, anyone can just use that container. That's not so easy for someone who doesn't even know what Docker is. I'm not saying that to suggest people are incompetent. As developers, we really should do better to make things easy.
Why is that the case? Size?
I am very familiar with dealing with old proprietary things that have to be fought tooth and nail to give you a simple text format, but that doesn't seem to be nearly the scale of trouble as you describe.