[Collaboration Workshop 12] The future of scientific software developer (researcher developer) in academia

Collaboration Workshop 12, Oxford

During 21st and 22nd March, the Collaboration Workshop 12 was taking place at Queen’s College of Oxford University.  The workshop mainly focused on the software development in academic projects and attracted more than fifteen researchers and developers. Thirty two topics were raised and discussed during the two day event and more than twenty lightning talks were presented.

Among these discussions and topics, I was enjoying the ones that were related to the collaboration between scientific researchers and software developers and a possible new specie for academic research projects - scientific software developer, who acts between the two or plays a dual role in the research.

Who / What is Scientific Software Developer

Alongside the rapid development of computer and computer technology, most of the recently scientific researches will be involved computer software or software development (In the workshop, someone(somewhere) mentioned 40% of research projects were linked to software but I forgot where I found it). We had topic about “Teaching programming to scientist” and “Successful collaboration with computer scientists”, which provided some nice suggestions. There are some natural limitation with above approaches. For example, the strength of a scientist lays on his/her research ability and if he/she starts to cars about programming he/she may lost focus. The computer scientists (it was changed to software developer for clarification during the discussion) usually cares about the quality of the software and cannot aware the research process.

So we need someone who can act the both roles and carry a software project toward success. Someone knows the natural of research and also is familiar with principles of software development.

Currently status of Scientific Software Developer

It is quite common that the researchers do the programming themselves and as we known this usually result in a poor, non-reusable, non-maintainable software.

EPSRC only invested £9 million per annum in software during the past five years. Comparing to the budget of £950M for the year 2012/2013, the software seems definitely ignored.

Similar role does exists but unfortunately there is a lack of identification and the person who does this job has usually not been recognised properly. Such person may be treated as a RA or RF, although he/she does a different job. There are some groups (Scientific Software Development and Management, Computational Science, and Computational Scientists and Engineers) in LinkedIn but we still lack a formal name for this whatever we called new specie.

Gorissen from University of Southampton mentioned they now started to have some posts specialised for scientific software developer. There is one from Imperial University who has similar job. But the we have not heard much of these from other universities. Henji from Microsoft also mentioned Microsoft Research (Cambridge) has “Research Software Development Engineers”, although it is no a academic position.

Where does Scientific Software Developer go?

The main problem with scientific software developer is not a proper name but the lack of career track and path. There isn’t any senior position for such a role. Eventually, you have to follow the route of Research Assistant –> (Research Fellow) –> Lecturer –> Senior Lecturer –> (Reader) –> Professor if you want to develop your career further. But as a scientific software developer you may lack of publications or project grants, which is essential in climbing the ladder in academic (If you decided opting to industry, they may consider you has no practical experience). So basically, you have wasted your time doing this role as it cannot provide your a strong portfolio.

Another problem is in a bid of academic research project, the labour of software developer is usually under-estimated. So there may not exist enough funding for another developer. And from the university point of view, having a pure scientific software developer not subject to any project is a waste and risk in finance, especially in the currently situation of government cutting findings.

What is the future of Scientific Software Developer?

Now, and in the near future, scientific software developer will still be a minority in academia. But things are getting better as Dan Emmerson from EPSRC introduced the Action Plan of “Software as an Infrastructure”. We will expect more funding and job posts in the coming years.

Acknowledgement

First, I would like to thanks all the attends in the workshop and give credit to those who have contributed in the discussion (without them, I cannot write such a topic).

Secondly, I would like to express my special thanks to DevCSI for sponsoring me.

Lastly, Thanks to all the organisers for their hard work and communications.

Disclaimer

This blog does not represent the view of Collaboration Workshop 12. All the opinions are subject to the author.

温格换了5万次人？？

我以前一直觉得国内很多新闻媒体都是标题和内容不符，而且很多时候不加思考胡乱转载。最近看到的一则新闻，让我尤为气愤。真的想大骂，你们转新闻时是不是不经过大脑的？！

事情缘于：上周阿森纳坐阵酋长球场迎战曼联，最终以1-2败北。赛后，教授温格的一次换人引起的媒体的普遍质疑，甚者连当时场上球员都有不解。那是比赛下半场，张伯伦刚刚助攻范佩西攻入扳平的一球，温格做出了一次让人大跌眼镜的换人：用近期表现低迷的阿沙文换下场上表现出色的张伯伦。此时，队长范佩西的表情是：

赛后，天空体育采访温格时，他也承认自己犯了一个战术失误（虽然在记者的追问下，他也不肯明说是什么失误）。采访视频可以才天空体育的官方网站看到：这里。


在这个新闻里，引用了一句话来表示温格坚持自己换人是正确的："I've been a manager for 30 years and have made 50,000 substitutions. I do not have to justify every decision I make to you (the Press). I stand up for it." 翻译成中文就是：我当了30年的教练，换了5万次人。我不需要向你们（媒体）解释我为什么换人。我相信我的决定。

于是，这句话成了事后被引用得最多的，媒体（特别是国内）用来炒作温格自我辩解的噱头。国内相关新闻：
6万阿森纳死忠狂嘘温格 教授:嘘我?我换过5万次人!，espnstar，搜狐， goal.com。
腾讯就更搞笑了，直接改成是范佩西说了：范佩西亲撰文否认与温格矛盾。

或许普通人看了不觉得什么，我在这里就是想说明一下，50000次换人，稍有足球知识的人就知道不可能。为什么呢，我来分析下：

温格1984年开始当主教练，到现在一共大概执教了1300多场比赛（按wikipedia是到2012.01.22一共有1317场）。一场比赛可以换3个人，一个最大就是1300×3=3900. 如果多算一些，算温格有1500场比赛，那就是4500次换人（如果外加什么友谊赛，换人不受限制的，算1万也不够5万啊）。

看网易的相关新闻：温格换人遭球迷狂嘘不认错 辩解称有5000次经验]，就感觉比较实际了。但是5000次，远远没有5万次有震撼力啊。

那么，来考察到底是谁出的错。每次英超比赛结束，天空体育是有对主教练的专访的，因此，天空体育应该可以算是消息发源地。专访的视频是在电视上及时（应该是有剪辑）播出的（上面天空体育网站的链接也有这个视频）。在视频中，我没有听到温格具体提到关于换人次数的解释，他只是说想换人做些改变。不过天空体育网站在相关新闻里面是引用了这么一段的：
"I've been a manager for 30 years and have made 50,000 substitutions. I do not have to justify every decision I make to you (the Press). I stand up for it."。
因为是放在引号里，所以可以认为是温格的原话。但是因为视频里面没有出现相关语句，可以认为有可能是温格口误（个人认为可能性地），或是说5000次，而网站编辑手误写成了50000。

不管是温格口误还是编辑手误，这都应该是一个错误。不少外媒在转载时就把50000换成了many（很多），而且一般都是用“温格辩解自己如何换人”这类标题的。因此，可以感觉到，其他媒体也觉得这个50000不合理，所以没有突出或者干脆换成很多次。反观国内，”五万次换人“成了绝好的新闻标题，特别是球场观众才6万人。估计再下次，标题该改成“6万阿森纳死忠狂嘘温格 教授:嘘我?我能换6万次人!”.

其他新闻领域我不清楚，但是足球这块，在我呆在国外这几年，通过对比国内和国外新闻，深深感受到某些新闻写稿人的知识之匮乏，网站编辑文平之底（我还常在体育新闻里看到错别字的）。我就不禁奇怪了，我们中华文化如此深厚，有见识有底蕴的知识分子是应该大有人在，为什么诸多新闻网站就充斥着如此多了垃圾新闻，标题新闻呢？别说深度评论，就是中肯准确的新闻都难得一见啊。如果没有相关知识，那读者们岂不是容易受误导，以讹传讹？

Big mistake: Wenger have made 50,000 substitutions?

Arsenal lost 1-2 at home to Man Utd. One substitution Arsene made surely seemed doubtful to everyone. But I would like to comment on one news that about Aresne's defence on his decision.

The full news can be seen as SKY Sports:

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/12047/7448943/

The quote is:

"I've been a manager for 30 years and have made 50,000 substitutions. I do not have to justify every decision I make to you (the Press). I stand up for it."

According to Wikipedia, up to 22 January 2012, Wenger has managed 1317 games (since 1984). The maximum substitutions he can make is 1317 * 3 = 3951.The statistic may not be accurate. But even if we assume he managed 2000 games, he can only made 6000 substitutions. There is no near 50000!

As I cannot find the interview video contains such conversation, so I don't know whether this came from Wenger or just the editor put the wrong figure.

In both case, the one with a brain should sense there is something wrong with such 50000! But ironically, such sentence has been quoted on many other website (include bbc).

2012 is not gonna to be a normal year - January So far

Although I'm not believing the film <2012>, this year seems definitely to be historical.

So far, many things happened as you would like to believe they are stories:

• You may think "Titanic" is an old story only happened in the old days. Costa Concordia tells you that history is copyable, no matter how advance the technology is.

• It had been like an overlord, but even like Kodak cannot stand the change of time. 

• The United State is said to be a land of liberty, but it seams SOPA and PIPA doesn't agree. So we had a first ever Internet Strike.

Sometimes, you may always believe something would never happen. You may be wrong in 2012!

NO-FLY-ZONE, NO-VEIL, What’s next? Enjoy your time with hats!

France or should I say Sarkozy has really shown himself on the international stage. Being eager to set up the no-fly-zone, I don’t believe the French care the democracy in Libya that much. If Libya has no oil, it will be ignored as many other countries.

Now it’s really a doubt about the democracy in France itself. The ban of veil is completely under democratic process, which means this presents the respect of liberty. Yes, the premise is that all the women who wearing full veil are forced. The logic is, we are going to help the women who hate wearing veil but were forced to do so. So we ban wearing veil that you all can enjoy your liberty of not wearing it. See? we are so care of you that we establish a law to protect you. So what happen to those who want to wear veils? Do they have right to wear it? I’m sorry, wearing veils is against liberty so you have no liberty to wear them.

Don’t believe this logic? Think terrorist! Why they got arrested and sentenced is because they are dangerous! Why we thrown so many bombs(sorry, missiles) in Libya? It’s because Gaddafi is a dictator. What? Civilian casualties? I’m sorry, Gaddafi is a dictator.

If something/someone is bad, and I’m against it. Then I’m good. If something/someone is bad in my opinion, and I’m against it. I’m still good. If someday I think wearing hats is harmful to liberty as the hats ban the right of hair to see the sun, I will ban hats! So enjoy your time of wearing hats now.

Do we really need a email client?

The reason to have a email client is to send and receive all my emails from different. Besides, the storage of email is very limited in the old days. Usually using an client software can easy this problem but now this looks not a big issue. I will use Gmail as an example to demonstrate a web email is no worse than a desktop client.

1. How fast you can see your emails.

I have using MS outlook and ThunderBird. They both take some time to launch and need more time to check new emails. They will be fast once start up but if you are the person don’t like to keep them up all the time (like me), you will sometimes get crazy if you only want to check an existing email because the client takes 10 seconds to initialize. With the web mail, it only take 1 second to open the webpage and you will be able to see your Inbox. I almost cannot feel any delay when I’m using gmail. The interface is very simply and basic. The search function is also very quick sometime even faster than my desktop client.

2. See emails in one place.

This is the main advantage for an desktop client. But today such gmail and hotmail both support fetch/send email from other account (if support POP3). For example, you can see the hotmail emails in your gmail. And you can also send email from gmail with its sent address to be set to your hotmail address.

3. Sync your contact and calendar

Actually web clients are more friendly as they are synced by nature. Desktop client won't be able to do this unless connect to a server ( like exchange).

4. MS Exchange!!

Here we come to the main challenge. For some reason, MS exchange and outlook look like in a dominating position. This combination offers email, calendar and direction service(contacts) together. This was too powerful than the web mail in the past. But nowadays, calendar and contacts have become very common in a web mail. The main problem is no big company can suffer such a transfer because exchange is totally a different format.

Recently I have seen universities moving their student email system to big company services (I.E. hotmail, gmail). This is good for both universities and students. As universities don’t need to maintain the system and students can enjoy the modern interface(compare to the previous email system). But staff email system remain the same (exchange).

Maybe in the future, all mail will move to web based?