The Shape of Code

Physics researchers aim to explain the workings of the universe (technically they build models whose behavior mimics that of the universe we can measure), biologists the workings of biological systems, and psychologists the working of the human mind.

What are researchers in software engineering aiming to do?

Talking to academics, the answer is that they aim to do research that can be published in a high impact journal.

What do those involved in commercial software development think software engineering researchers should be aiming to achieve?

Most of the commercial developers I have asked have never thought about the subject; hardly surprising, they have plenty of other issues to think about.

Those who pay for software, rather than create it, want it to be cheaper and delivered faster.

Vendors are under some pressure to reduce costs and deliver sooner. But since its inception, software has been a sellers market, which means the customer pressure does not have the impact it has in other industries.

The very large organizations who pay lots of money for software for their own use (e.g., the U.S. Department of Defence) recognise that research into software production may well save them lots of money, and at one time interesting things were being discovered, but then funding got rerouted to people with an aversion to actual software engineering, i.e., academics.

Cheaper and faster will always be of interest, and will start to become a hot topic in software engineering research once software starts to becoming a buyers market.

Maintaining existing systems continues its growth to dominating what nearly every software developer does. Dependencies on the rest of the software world (e.g., libraries and compilers) is starting to consume a large percentage of maintenance costs. Managers want to know which packages are likely to have a long and stable lifetime, and which are likely to be short-lived. An understanding of the evolution of software ecosystems is a pressing need. This is really cheaper and faster over the long term.

Cheaper and faster (short term for development, long term for maintenance) covers everything.

It’s tempting to list personnel selection, i.e., who is likely to make the best software developer. But why should the process of selecting software developers be any different from the processes used to select people to become doctors, lawyers and other professions? I’m sure that those involved in the various professions would like a magic wand that points to the appropriate people (for some definition of appropriate), this magic wand is no more likely to exist for software developers than any other profession.

What do you think the aims of software engineering research should be?