The Shape of Code

Evidence-based software research requires access to data, and Github has become the primary source of raw material for many (most?) researchers.

Parallels are starting to emerge between today’s researchers exploring Github and biologists exploring nature centuries ago.

Centuries ago scientific expeditions undertook difficult and hazardous journeys to various parts of the world, collecting and returning with many specimens which were housed and displayed in museums and botanical gardens. Researchers could then visit the museums and botanical gardens to study these specimens, without leaving the comforts of their home country. What is missing from these studies of collected specimens is information on the habitat in which they lived.

Github is a living museum of specimens that today’s researchers can study without leaving the comforts of their research environment. What is missing from these studies of collected specimens is information on the habitat in which the software was created.

Github researchers are starting the process of identifying and classifying specimens into species types, based on their defining characteristics, much like the botanist Carl_Linnaeus identified stamens as one of the defining characteristics of flowering plants. Some of the published work reads like the authors did some measurements, spotted some differences, and then invented a plausible story around what they had found. As a sometime inhabitant of this glasshouse I will refrain from throwing stones.

Zoologists study the animal kingdom, and entomologists specialize in the insect world, e.g., studying Butterflys. What name might be given to researchers who study software source code, and will there be specialists, e.g., those who study cryptocurrency projects?

The ecological definition of a biome, as the community of plants and animals that have common characteristics for the environment they exist in, maps to the end-user use of software systems. There does not appear to be a generic name for people who study the growth of plants and animals (or at least I cannot think of one).

There is only so much useful information that can be learned from studying specimens in museums, no matter how up to date the specimens are.

Studying the development and maintenance of software systems in the wild (i.e., dealing with the people who do it), requires researchers to forsake their creature comforts and undertake difficult and hazardous journeys into industry. While they are unlikely to experience any physical harm, there is a real risk that their egos will be seriously bruised.

I want to do what I can to prevent evidence-based software engineering from just being about mining Github. So I have a new policy for dealing with PhD/MSc student email requests for data (previously I did my best to point them at the data they sought). From now on, I will tell students that they need to behave like real researchers (e.g., Charles Darwin) who study software development in the wild. Charles Darwin is a great role model who should appeal to their sense of adventure (alternative suggestions welcome).