As a researcher: all the professional software engineers here have no idea about the requirements for code in a research setting.
I recommend you use
- git. It's nice to be able to revert changes without worry.
- descriptive variable names. The meaning of descriptive is highly dependent on your situation. Single letters can have an obvious meaning, but err on the side of longer names if you're unsure. The goal is to be able to look at a variable and instantly know what it represents.
- virtual environments and requirements.txt. when you have your code working you should have pip (or anaconda or whatever) take a snapshot of your current python installation. Then you can install the exact same requirements when you want to revive your code a few months or years down the line. I didn't do that and it's kinda biting me in the ass right now.