As you might know, my primary background stems from the field of academia and research, but over the past years my interests have focused increasingly on software engineering.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear to me today that if I had known what I know today about software, I would without doubt have been a much, much more productive researcher and graduate student. It’s simply not possible today to carry out research without programming. And research itself, to be considered valuable, requires exactly the same qualitities demanded from modern software engineering: repeatability, versioning, and safe explorations.
I’m convinced today that researchers would benefit if practicing software engineers would give them some feedback on how they solve these problems. And I’ve often pondered whether I should begin writing on software engineering topics that I think could be relevant for scientists and/or engineers, particularly in the academic field. It could even form the basis for a series of blog posts.
I’d rather ask you, dear reader, for advice on this. **Would you like me to begin a series of posts on software engineering topics relevant to scientists and engineers in academia?** And if yes, which particular subjects would you like to see me discuss?
I’m really, really looking forward to reading your comments on this matter.