Research Code as Infrastructure (RCaI)

Speaker:
Marco Raglianti

Abstract:
As PhD students, researchers, (co-)advisors, and practitioners in software engineering, we produce a substantial amount of source code, the infrastructure of our careers. At the same time, research groups in the Software Institute are not professional software development companies. There are inevitable tensions between objectives and deadlines, present needs and return on investments in development time, goals and human resources. These tensions play a significant role in the lifecycle of source code we produce. 
In this seminar talk I will present my perspective on the current state of practice and its implications. I will use CODI, a conversation disentanglement tool whose development I co-supervised, as an example of (so-far-only-academically) successful design decisions, not without compromises. Making these compromises explicit helps in giving them the appropriate weight, highlighting directions to increase medium and long-term relevance of our research code

Biography:
Marco Raglianti is currently a PhD candidate in the REVEAL (Reverse Engineering, Visualization, Evolution Analysis Lab) research group, at the Software Institute, USI, Lugano, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Michele Lanza. He obtained his Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Pisa in 2012. His current research involves mapping and reifying the documentation landscape of software systems. He is also interested in forms of communication becoming software documentation; he is investigating Discord as a potential source to aid in program comprehension and maintenance.

Chair:
Tahereh Zohdinasab

Click here to join the seminar online: https://tinyurl.com/22r2p4us