Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

 

On HCI and CS Progress

Lee Iverson: HCI and CS Progress.  Lee starts with questions raised in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and notices that there doesn't seem to be much forward progress in Computer Science (CS) either.  It seems to me that the question is around having an applicable body of knowledge, with scientifically-confirmed foundation, that can be used in the engineering of practical processes and artifacts.  Lee laments what he sees as a scarcity of theory development and refinement.  That may be so.

I think the greatest problem is that CS is not recognized (within CS) as an empirical science, and this leads to a strong disconnect with the needs for software engineering and the creation of engineered artifacts, including computer programs.

So I can align with the inquiry that Lee proposes: What new kinds of theories are needed?  What is the connection to software engineering practice?  What would an experimental computer scientist be doing?  An experimental software-engineering researcher?  I'd say that one barrier to progress is the presumption that the proper theoretical framework for software engineering is to be found in formal mathematics.
posted by Dennis at 5/12/2004 01:05:38 PM