Pasteur’s Quadrant Bridging the Gap between Basic and Use-Inspired Research in Software Engineering (Invited Talk - VEM 2015)

Pasteur’s Quadrant is a classification proposed to describe research that is fundamental for the advancement of knowledge (basic research) but at the same time seeks for immediate solutions to real-world problems (use-inspired research). The name is a tribute to Louis Pasteur, whose scientific discoveries changed the way we view and prevent many diseases. In this talk, we first advocate that software engineering research should always target Pasteur’s Quadrant. Software engineering researchers should constantly look for hard, novel, and fundamental solutions (basic research) but that have an immediate contribution to software practitioners (use-inspired research). We then list some strategies that can help to deliver basic, but use-inspired scientific results. Finally, we share our experience on using these strategies in two recent projects from our research group, in the areas of software maintenance, evolution, and visualization.

Transcript

1. Pasteur’s Quadrant Bridging the Gap between Basic and Use- Inspired Research in Software Engineering Marco Tulio Valente VEM Workshop, BH, Sept 2015
3. 3 Basic vs Applied: false dichotomy
4. 4 Research Classification http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2013/06/s peaking-frankly-the-allure-of-pasteurs-quadrant.html
5. 5 Research Classification http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2013/06/s peaking-frankly-the-allure-of-pasteurs-quadrant.html
6. Software Engineering Research should target Pasteur’s Quadrant 6
7. Software Engineering Research 7 We need to make progress on both fronts
8. Software Engineering Research • Basic Research – Expand our knowledge on software engineering principles and techniques • Use-Inspired Research – Change the way people develop software 8 We need to make progress on both fronts
9. Two strategies to make our research more effective (including examples from our research group) 9
10. #1: Incremental research has its value (specially to transfer results) 10
11. JSCity 11 • Code City (Lanza & Wettel): OO language
12. JSCity 12 • Code City (Lanza & Wettel): OO language • JSCity: Code City for (and by) JavaScript https://github.com/aserg-ufmg/JSCity
13. JSCity • Yes, incremental – New language, minor adaptations 13
14. JSCity • Yes, incremental – New language, minor adaptations • But, we promoted code city among practitioners – 30K page views, +400 stars, many tweets 14
15. JSCity • Yes, incremental – New language, minor adaptations • But, we promoted code city among practitioners – 30K page views, +400 stars, many tweets • And, received valuable feedback – Cool to see isomer[0] on here :) Does the visualization mean I'm doing good? 15
16. #2: We can (and should) involve practitioners early in research projects 16
17. Truck Factor • Heuristics to compute the truck factor of a project 17
18. Truck Factor • Heuristics to compute the truck factor of a project • Truck Factor (aka bus factor) – Number of developers that have to be hit by a truck (or quit) before a project is incapacitated 18
19. Example: Truck Factor • Blog post and preprint promoting our first heuristic 19 https://peerj.com/preprints/1233/ http://mtov.github.io/Truck-Factor/
20. Truck Factor • Great attention on social media sites – Slashdot, Hacker News, etc • Audience – Blog: 30K page views – Preprint: +4,500 downloads 20
21. Truck Factor 21 • Survey with developers • Response ratio of 70%, some answers with +4 pages
22. Truck Factor 22 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/issues/12726 • Survey with developers • Response ratio of 70%, some answers with +4 pages
23. Truck Factor 23 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/issues/12726 Your preprint generated some interesting discussion internally when it first came out • Survey with developers • Response ratio of 70%, some answers with +4 pages
24. Pasteur’s is our quadrant Basic && Use-inspired Research 24 Take-Away Message
25. Thanks! Marco Tulio Valente UFMG, Brazil VEM Workshop, BH, Sept 2015