Personally, I much prefer “software research” from engineers working in the industry. I’m sceptical of software research being done at universities.
The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
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Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
#12One example would help their case.
> Thanks to software research, we know that most code comprehensibility metrics do not, in practice, reflect what they are supposed to measure.
Linked research doesn't really agree. But if it did, so?
If comprehensibility is not a simple metric then who's got a magic wand to do the fancy feedback? Sounds like it'd take a human/AGI which is useless, that's why we have metrics.
Are any real programmers who produce things for the world using comprehensibility metrics or is it all the university fakers and their virtual world they have created?
If this is their 'one example' it sucks.
Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
#13Science Research doesn't happen for its own sake. Every effort needs to be a part of the pipeline of demand and supply. Otherwise it's just a tune that you sing in the shower.
> Every effort needs to be a part of the pipeline of demand and supply
It's almost unthinkable the amount of technology and innovations we would have never gotten if this was actually true in practice. So many inventions happened because two people happen to be in the same place for no particular reason, or someone noticed something strange/interesting and started going down the rabbit-hole for curiosities sake, with demand/supply having absolutely zero bearing on that.
I got to be honest, it's slightly strange to see something like that stated here out of all places, where most of us dive into rabbit-holes for fun and no profit, all the time, and supply/demand is probably the least interesting part of the puzzle when it comes to understanding and solving problems.
Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
#14Do you have any good recommendations about recent software development research?
Till today I still share with my coworkers this 15yo article from Microsoft Research:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/exploding-soft...
Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
#15Personally, I much prefer “software research” from engineers working in the industry. I’m sceptical of software research being done at universities.
I feel much of the knowledge and experience in the industry is simply lost because it isn't widely documented and studied. There needs to be detailed histories of major software development projects from the industry, in book form for people to learn from, in the same way as histories of military campaigns and railway projects.
It not widely done, and we end up with mere "Software Archeology", where we have artefacts like code, but the entire human process of why and how it reached that form left unknown.
Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
#16Personally, I much prefer “software research” from engineers working in the industry. I’m sceptical of software research being done at universities.
Scientists come from all facets of life you know? Some might've even been at FAANG at some point :)
Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
#17Science Research doesn't happen for its own sake. Every effort needs to be a part of the pipeline of demand and supply. Otherwise it's just a tune that you sing in the shower.
You are describing applied research. But fundamental research seeks to expand knowledge itself, and unsurprisingly delivers a lot of unplanned value.
Applied research consists of taking theoretical findings and applying them to a specific application. As such, applied research requires fundamental research.
Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
#18Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
#19Science Research doesn't happen for its own sake. Every effort needs to be a part of the pipeline of demand and supply. Otherwise it's just a tune that you sing in the shower.
The Fourier transform existed for the sake of existing for ~200 years before it turned out to be useful for building the entirety of our communications infrastructure on top of.
I agree 100% in spirit. Electrical transmission lines were not understood when Fourier did his work. Maxwell wasn't even born yet. And the math ultimately unleashed by Fourier transforms goes way beyond applications.
In cold hard dates, though, Fourier was already using his series to solve heat transfer problems in 1822.
I don't agree with the bizarre idea that every bit of research should have a clear utility. I'm just being careful about dates. And I think FTs kind of were invented with a view towards solving differential equations for physics. Just not electrical ones.
Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is only partly true. MRI technology came out of people hunting for aliens in space. The path science and discovery take are rarely as linear as the funders would like them to be.
There are always edge cases. But the bulk follows the gravity flow. Even poetry, these days, should find a buyer.
> Even poetry, these days, should find a buyer.
Why?