Academic Relevance

Is the centuries-old academic value system still relevant today? Which parts of time-honored tradition still apply, and which need to be reformed?

This has long been an issue with the pattern community. There is a fundamental ValueSystemConflict? between the two communities: novelty versus experience, single publication versus broad dissemination of experience, and many others (see "When Worlds Collide," CppReport 9(7), July/August 1997, pages 34 - 39.)

Two encounters have brought this to mind recently. One was a visit to Loyola university where I spoke on patterns and the pattern value system. One of the professors there pointed out an interesting facet of the academic value system. Academics are often rated, at least in part, by how often others cite their work. That means that academic work is given value proportional to the degree it influences other academics, rather than by a standard of the (admittedly more difficult to measure) applicability and concrete application of the ideas.

The second encounter took place at a recent conference. I chatted with a professor, well-known in the OO community. He noted that university teaching is the only producer-driven economy. Where else do you pay for a service (like teaching) which, when it fails, is blamed unilaterally on the customer?

Some folks in the pattern community are talking about a SoftwareMastersOfFineArts. Might it run afoul of the same values that plague the academic value system? Or is it an opportunity to put teaching and research on a new footing?

Add your thoughts here. Remember, when you add your thoughts, that most folks out there are trying to do their best to help using the techniques they know. Academics are perhaps blind to the pattern folks' perspective, but so are the pattern folks' perspectives blind to the academic values. I hope we can have some non-judgmental dialogue here.

-- JimCoplien

I think, we carefully have to distinguish two different aspects: The basic ideas of academia and the formal rules that have developed over the recent centuries. I think, the basic ideas are still valid and hold for the pattern community as well: Prove what you are stating (Known Uses...), be sure to have a rationale that others can follow, don't steal ideas and so on. These are all important values of the pattern community too.

The other side of the medal are formal rules. The rules are not quite the same for the different cultures. At least in Germany, "reputation" (what ever that may be) is more important than the number of citations. But in the end it all comes to the same: There are many traditional rules that force science into a tight skeleton - sometimes taking it's breath in it's conservative cage. I think, most of the "different" rules in the pattern community just try to break out of this cage. That' how great ideas usually are born, so let's drive as much power as we can from our freedom. We may make mistakes and run into the problems, the academic rules want to prevent. But kids who want to learn to walk, also fall onto their bottom - and they fall quite often.

-- JensColdewey, October 3rd [year???]

What are the core values of academe?

I'm not sure, but independent peer review is one, and this is still valid today. In practice though this value is skewed by the funding culture supporting academe. Perhaps that can explain the conflict. Fine arts receives little funding whilst physics gets the most.

Many physicists spend most of their time writing software, which they are not necessarily trained to do.

Why is that?

I am employed in academe as a software engineering researcher and have recently written a paper based on my experience collaborating with the physics community. My conclusion was that there are generic problems (AntiPatterns I think) with academic software production which can only be rectified by a change in culture: from review of papers to review of software. The paper was accepted by APSEC2002, which seems ironic!

I hope you find this relevant and can help bridge the gap between the academic and pattern communities. -- LeeMomtahan

I like to tease universities. I call them up and ask, "May I have the number of your CustomerService Department, please?" -- PhlIp

The germ of a new JerkyBoys? album? Probably.

I come from the business community and have been trying for years to promote a very powerful application development technology (FlowBasedProgramming). We know it works well in real life as we have been running a major bank using this technology (millions of transactions a day), mostly for batch, but we know it is applicable to interactive as well.

Anyway, I recently met with some academics, who admitted that they would not be allowed to write theses on this topic, and probably, by the time they get tenure, they will no longer be interested! I guess this bugs me as we see an endless stream of papers being produced of limited use to the business community, while this very intriguing practical technology sits on the shelf. Strangely, it is related to many concepts that are being worked on in the academic community, but most of these tend to stay as 'toy' or purely theoretical efforts.

As a postscript, I find it fascinating that my kid brother who is a miner of many years' experience and knows very little about computing, complains of exactly the same problem in the mining industry: on the one hand, the academics who are out of touch with the real world of mining, and, on the other, miners who are advancing the state of the art, but not getting any attention in academia. Go figure! -- PaulMorrison

Neither the world of academia nor the world of business (nor politics for that matter) are the sterling meritocracies that the proponents of each claim them to be. However, those of us in the sciences have it fairly good--you should see the squabbling, backstabbing, and raw politics that marches under the banner of "scholarship" in the liberal arts and social sciences--areas where such concepts as falsifiability and reproducibility (hallmarks of the ScientificMethod) are simply not available.

That's true! However, my question is: how do we get them to talk to each other?! A chap called HenryChesbrough? just got an honorable mention in the Dec. 2003 Scientific American for trying to start the dialog. Ah well, better late than never!

Academic writing is a disease. It's like a singing voice that knows only, like, three notes---seriousness.

You might reconsider whether you should give to such voices much credence then. Find writing that suits your intellectual pallette, and that perhaps sings with more notes, or perhaps only one note, and has a large number of maestros. One can hear far more notes in academia than three if one listens without prejudice to the whole orchestra. -- DonaldNoyes 20080128