Re: PPIG discuss: What should we study???

[Michael and Diana Finney]

(I'd learn more about Java 2 before you speak more about it.
http://www.javasoft.com )

Yes.  

IMHO,

We should study 
  1. languages; (languages that can keep a programmer from corrupting
memory like Java can is important!)
  2. efficient and inefficient means of problem solving
  3. understanding/showing the importance of having a well defined
problem space modeled in UML or the like
  4. management of software teams (large and small)
  5..n  :       

Of course, the vice president is going to stress about how much money it
costs to change/maintain code.  However, the process of software
development is something that is very important.  Those other areas in
departments are important, but a researcher is required to focus
somewhere to go in-depth in any area.  Otherwise, all you probably can
do is skim the surface.  It's more than a book for sure.  :)

Michael

Janice Singer wrote:
> 
> I think this is the one of the most interesting discussions we've had on this list 
>for the 5 years that I've been a member.  As I am probably vastly incorrectly
> interrupting Ruven - the question is - what should we, as PPIGer's, study.
> 
> Well, I work in a gov't funded Software Engineering Lab, and believe me, it's an 
>important question.  As a little anecdote, a couple of years ago at the International
> Conference on Software Maintenance, I presented some work on the daily activities 
>done by software engineers (reports of a field study).  Directly after the talk, the 
>VP
> of research of a fairly large corporation, came and told me, "Yeah, all well and 
>good, but I did a study at our company, and found that it only takes about 5 minutes 
>to
> change the code and 105 HOURS to get that code into production."  Meaning to me, 
>that what I was studying was insignificant in the context of the larger software
> engineering community and the problems it was facing.
> 
> This suggests that the notion of applying psychology to software engineering is 
>important, as this VP told me, but that maybe the questions we are pursuing are
> unimportant in the context of industrial problems.
> 
> So, I pose this question to all of you?  What should we be studying, CMM, languages, 
>configuration managment, distributed software development, management of large
> software teams, etc...
> 
> Janice