Re: [OT] Systems Software Research is Irrelevant

["Marc A. Criley" <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com>]

"Chris Humphries" <chris@unixfu.net> wrote:
> Systems Software Research is Irrelevant
> by Rob Pike of Bell Laboratories
>
> "Systems software research has become a sideline to the excitement in
> the computing industry."
>
> http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/175/
>
> It is an interesting read :)

Yes, it is.

And it concisely sums up why I find ACM's journal, "Communications of the
ACM" just a complete waste of paper:

"Mostly, though, it's just a lot of measurement, a misinterpretation and
misapplication of the scientific method.

"Too much phenomenology: invention has been replaced by observation. Today
we see papers comparing interrupt latency on Linux vs. Windows. They may be
interesting, they may even be relevant, but they aren't research.

"In a misguided attempt to seem scientific, there's too much measurement:
performance minutiae and bad charts."

I finished up last month's CACM (which means flipping through it trying to
find something, anything of interest) and once again it's chock full of
surveys, survey protocols, and plans for conducting further surveys.

Not to pick on ACM, though, since their other magazine, Queue, is everything
that CACM is not: interesting, relevant, and an enjoyable read.

Marc A. Criley
McKae Technologies
www.mckae.com