Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bunny!jwg1
From: jwg1@bunny.UUCP (James W. Gish)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: who is doing research on software engineering?
Message-ID: <5776@bunny.UUCP>
Date: 30 Mar 88 18:20:52 GMT
References: <2610@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: jwg1@bunny.UUCP (James W. Gish)
Distribution: na
Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA
Lines: 48
Keywords: Software Engineering Research

In article <2610@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> neff@Shasta.UUCP (Randy Neff) writes:
>I am curious, just who is really doing software engineering research these
>days, either in academia or in industrial research labs?   Like using Unix, Ada,
>color workstations, color graphical tools, formal languages, reuse libraries.
>Where is the vision?  Where are the future advances coming from?  Who is
>searching for the Silver Bullet?
>Certainly in some 'famous' computer science departments, software engineering
>is not an 'acceptable' field of research. 
>So what is the future and where is it coming from?   Am I going to have to 
>spend the rest of my programming life in the current morass?
>
One place it is being done is here at GTE Laboratories in Waltham,
Massachusetts.  The Labs is the central research group for all of GTE
Corp. It's divided into four laboratories: Materials Science,
Electronics and Photonics, Telecommunications Research, and Computer
and Intelligent Systems (the lab I'm in).  CISL has four departments:
Intelligent Database Systems, Knowledge-Based Systems, Self-Improving
Systems, Computer and Information Systems and Software Technologies
(the dept. I'm in).  The Software Technologies department is doing
research in software reusability, rapid prototyping, programming
environments and user interface management systems.  In the other
departments there are projects on connectionist systems, expert
systems, enterprise modelling, heterogeneous database systems and
others.  
 
Most companies don't recognize the need for software engineering
research or even available methodologies until they are on the way
out. Many never do.  I'm fortunate to have found a company that at
least at some level believes in software engineering research.  I'm
sure there are other companies that feel the same.  Our department is
a (too) small group and we're not turning out silver bullets but we're
giving it our best shot.

Also consider that there are more than a handful of CASE companies in
existence (although most will not survive). Some of them have some
excellent ideas that they are turning into products.  It's
unfortunate, but not very much of this work is going on in
universities, yet some of it has considerable merit and deserves
academic scrutiny and nourishment.





-- 
Jim Gish
GTE Laboratories, Inc., Waltham, MA
CSNET: jwg1@gte-labs    UUCP:  ..!harvard!bunny!jwg1