Hanania,
In the paper that I mentioned in a previous posting, Wieringa claimed that
much of the Software Engineering (SE) research does not apply scientific
methods. Not only that I agreed with him, but I claimed that the situation
is even worth than that; in many of the SE papers the
Errol writes,
1) why supporters of particular approaches to software development are
talking past each other and not necessarily hearing what each other are
saying?
I would hypothesize that it is because they do not understand each other.
Computer scientists are trying to solve a very difficult
A marvellous analysis of the reasons for the mathematical
(or formal) versus human orientation in software engineering can
be found in Phil Agre's chapter Conceptions of the user in
computer system design. So far as I know, his observations
regarding the user as human person have not been
As one of many working to shed light on the human side of software
engineering in academia, I thought I'd raise a few points.
It is true that many academics prefer the mathematical approach. But
I've also spoken to several dozen over the years with other
perspectives. For example, much of
In the paper that I mentioned in a previous posting, Wieringa claimed
that much of the Software Engineering (SE) research does not apply
scientific methods. Not only that I agreed with him, but I claimed
that the situation is even worth than that; in many of the SE papers
the
Alan
Indeed this sounds very interesting, and an avenue worthy of being
pursued.
I and colleagues have been researching the human and social aspects of
software development, with a particular focus on software practice, for
quite some time. There is renewed interest in the area and the
