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to academics
Jan. 23rd, 2013 12:04 amDear academics,
In my MS work, I put together something which appears to be a novel mechanism for doing software debugging. Unfortunately, I was unable to convince my adviser that this constituted a 'contribution', because I had no way to judge effectiveness. I had to bail out with a non-thesis because of this inability to convince. What I came up with was, instead, a tool. Is this tool useful? I honestly don't know. It's not applied research, that's for sure.
I don't know how to quantify if it's a good tool or not. User experience studies are hard to put together correctly, and in this particular area, are simply not there. I could qualify by saying it provides insight into the problem, which is true. I provide information unavailable by other means. I am reasonably certain that this approach is novel in the literature, and is not provided in the current state of industrial art AFAICT.
But, is the question "useful" a legitimate question for academia? I have continually felt that "usefulness" was and is a question for application & industry: academia (should?) be a place where novel ideas are invented and played with without regard for applicability.
What do you think?
In my MS work, I put together something which appears to be a novel mechanism for doing software debugging. Unfortunately, I was unable to convince my adviser that this constituted a 'contribution', because I had no way to judge effectiveness. I had to bail out with a non-thesis because of this inability to convince. What I came up with was, instead, a tool. Is this tool useful? I honestly don't know. It's not applied research, that's for sure.
I don't know how to quantify if it's a good tool or not. User experience studies are hard to put together correctly, and in this particular area, are simply not there. I could qualify by saying it provides insight into the problem, which is true. I provide information unavailable by other means. I am reasonably certain that this approach is novel in the literature, and is not provided in the current state of industrial art AFAICT.
But, is the question "useful" a legitimate question for academia? I have continually felt that "usefulness" was and is a question for application & industry: academia (should?) be a place where novel ideas are invented and played with without regard for applicability.
What do you think?
