Jamie, >> > I think most software engineering academics are acutely >> >aware that they are criticized in industry for doing irrelevant >> >research. >> I would not characterize it that way. I think the idea that academics >> do research that one day may or may not be useful in 10+ years is >> generally accepted. > > I think we must go to different SE conferences or get >different messages from them.
Probably been to less than a dozen in my life. I was referring to how industry views academic research. >> It is the claims that past and current research (at >> least in software engineering) is relevant today that causes much disbelief. > > I do hope that that wasn't the sweeping generalization >about all SE research that it appears to be! We probably have different views about what topics come under SE research. Some people would claim that formal methods is not just a branch of pure maths, but has some connection with SE (I have just looked at your web page :-). >workers down a bit but is mostly unobtrusive. Experimental >psychologists can do a lot of good research using undergrads as Experimental psychologists? From what I can see they all perform experiments. >subjects, because they may be better able to make the assumption >that the undergrads are representative humans for the purposes >of what they are studying. SE researchers often have to go to >companies and get people to do things, and therein lies the problem. The issue is one of practice. A strong case can be made for showing that undergraduates have had plenty of practice (usually a large percentage of their life) performing tasks related to those they are asked to perform in psychology studies (in some studies involving reasoning it has been argued that they are not representative of the general population). Undergraduates have not had anywhere near the amount of SE practice workers in industry have had (be it good or bad). Therefore it cannot be claimed that the results of SE studies using undergraduates will correlate with those performed using commercially experienced developers. >calling in sick), and that yields publishable results. Academic ALERT! The publishing treadmill. Industry is on the quarterly financial results treadmill (or for the somewhat smaller companies the lunch with bank manager readmill). > Having to work within these constraints seems to mean >basically avoiding certain areas of research. For instance, any >tool or technique that takes more than 60 minutes to learn is I would have said that any that study that involves more than 30 seconds of learning should be avoided. >puzzle for researchers, especially if they have to also extract >a continuous stream of publications out of the research. Just to show that you are not a dyed in the wool academic: Given the choice between: a) funding for a study that you know will produce 10 publishable papers if no industrial relevance, b) funding for a study that you know will produce 1 publishable paper of some industrial relevance. which would you choose? derek -- Derek M Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667 Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
