The Refreshingly Rewarding Realm of Research Papers

Have you ever run into a thorny problem that makes your code slow or complicated, for which there is no obvious solution? Have you ever needed a data structure that your language’s standard library didn’t provide? You might need to implement a research paper!

While much of research in Computer Science doesn’t seem relevant to your everyday web application, all of those tools and techniques you use daily originally came from research! In this talk we’ll learn why you might want to read and implement research papers, how to read them for relevant information, and how to translate what they describe into code and test the results. Finally, we’ll discuss examples of research implementation I’ve been involved in and the relationships I’ve built with researchers in the process.

Transcript

1. The Refreshingly Rewarding Realm of Research Papers Sean Cribbs @seancribbs Comcast Cable CityCode Chicago - October 9, 2015
2. CC BY-2.0 U.S. Army
3. Interview What accomplishment are you most proud of? I helped put CRDTs into Riak. Ok, but we don’t spend our time here implementing research papers. WAT
4. I spend a lot of time implementing research papers???
5. Backpedaling
9. Why care? CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Judy van der Velden CC BY-NC 2.0 hehaden
13. Getting Started CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Judy van der Velden
17. Ok, but how do I start?
18. Ask colleagues
19. Attend Papers We Love
20. Adrian Colyer’s The Morning Paper
21. ACM Classification System
22. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Kevin Harber
23. Reading & Comprehending CC BY-SA 2.0 Nic McPhee
24. First pass Title, abstract and introduction Section headings Conclusions References 24 http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p83-keshavA.pdf CC BY-SA 2.0 catherinecronin
25. Second Pass Read more closely Proofs, graphs, figures Mark unread references 25 http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p83-keshavA.pdf CC BY-SA 2.0 catherinecronin
26. Third pass Step through closely Challenge all assumptions Compare thought processes 26 http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p83-keshavA.pdf CC BY-SA 2.0 Nic McPhee
27. At the End Summarize in 1-2 sentences Outline major contributions Note strengths / weaknesses 27 CC BY 2.0 Jacob Bøtter
28. Implementing CC BY-SA 2.0 Nelson Pavlosky
29. Use familiar tools
30. Beware pseudocode and reference implementations
31. Prepare to write and rewrite
32. Test early, Test often
33. Interacting
35. HOW TO IMPLEMENT PAPERS FOR GREAT JUSTICE!!!!!!!!!! Read papers! Write code! Meet people! Improve your craft!
36. THANKS