[Gnu-arch-users] re: buzzword paper

[Thomas Lord]

Andrew:

> A little poking around the Southampton university website (this is
> like 20 minutes away from where I live, btw) indicates that this is
> almost certainly a paper by a recent graduate and/or research student,
> with their supervisor's name tacked on. It's probably a writeup of a
> personal project.

> I don't think there's anything to see here. Every university in the
> world generates these things by the hundred every year. I've written a
> couple myself. They rarely go very far - it's more to do with academic
> justification than practical results.

The paper suggests that the work-in-progress they are working on will
be used by a larger, ongoing project.   I don't think this is *just*
a blip.

But, yes, I agree -- this specific thing is not obviously going far.
It's not unimaginable it would wind up being uncritically adopted by
something like Eclipse and, from there, having a more direct social
consequence.  I don't claim otherwise.

The mode of reasoning, though -- that is much larger than just this
one project.   That's where the real concern is and where there 
certainly are "things to see".

As I pointed out, taxonomic v. ontological confusion in analyzing
software engineering efforts has serious economic consequences
and is subject to gaming and sabotage.  (ahem.)

-t