Subject: what we're up against
From: Todd D Millstein (todd@cs.washington.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 08 2001 - 18:51:55 PST
An anecdote:
I happened to go to lunch today with an unnamed faculty member. In the
course of discussing an unnamed faculty candidate, the faculty member said
that one downside of the candidate was his/her interest in static analysis
and dynamic analysis, and this faculty member, whose research is unrelated
to these areas, had heard that static and dynamic analysis are dead fields
-- people have been doing them for 20 years, and there's nothing more to
do that can be done.
I found this comment astounding and disturbing. I think this faculty
member was completely well meaning, but how does somebody take on faith
that a huge area of research (arguably encompassing much of programming
languages, compilers, and software engineering) is dead? And how does
this impression get started in the first place? Worse, I get the uneasy
feeling that this faculty member is not alone.
Why does our field get such bad PR? Is it more deserved than other
fields? If so, how can we address that? If not, how can we change the
way we present our work to affect public opinion more positively?
Todd
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