Empa Scientific IT Seminar Series: Research Software Engineering seen from Industry

We are pleased to announce the following event from the RSE community at Empa on 19 February 15-16.

Marco Gähler: “Research Software Engineering seen from Industry”

The room is already full, but the organizers are offering a zoom link for remote attendance.

Abstract

At university, we learn how to write functions and classes, and then we are expected to write large-scale software. This just doesn’t work. The code I wrote at the end of my studies was terrible. I didn’t even know that my code was bad; I just had this feeling that things were incredibly difficult. Most PhD students that I know face the same issue, and it’s not their fault. The problem is that we were never taught what software engineering is all about. In most research groups, there is a serious lack of knowledge regarding software engineering, which costs a lot of time and money.

I’m currently writing a book dedicated to myself back then, explaining everything I learned during the last few years in industry. I also help some PhD students at ETH improve their code. The progress some of them made in a few months is amazing, as the basic laws behind proper software engineering are very easy to learn. You just need someone to teach them to you.

Now, I would love to discuss with the research groups at Empa about their state of software engineering and how it could be improved.