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Does Anyone in IT Read Academic Literature?
digital book worm asks: "I'm a soon-to-be fresh-out with a Masters degree in Computer Science. For the last several years I've had paper after paper shoved in my face, and following some of the major publications (such as Communications of the ACM, IEEE Software, and some of the IEEE Transactions series) and conference proceedings has become second nature. I can't help but wonder though: For those of you outside of academia, do you find that there is any benefit to following the latest research on a regular basis? Clearly there are times when it is appropriate to go back and look for papers that solve a particular problem you're working on, but I'm finding it a little difficult to believe my professors' hype that the latest and greatest is the stuff that goes on in these papers, and that I should make it a life-long goal to keep current on many of the publications listed above."
There is a great deal of dross that is published in even the better scientific journals and it is quite a task keeping up with even a small field. I can't imagine many people who are not directly involved in research would be able to find the time to keep abreast.
/Science/ or /Nature/.
I'd like to see better summaries of research published; something available in between reading all the abstracts and interesting papers in the top journals of the field and just reading the occasional flasgship paper in
When I was in software design (with some hardware work), I followed several academic journals and a plethora of trade papers to keep up.
Now, after a career veer into network and systems administration, I haven't run across much worth reading on a regular basis. It may be there, but I haven't found it.
Even with the "dross", and the stuff I didn't care about, it was worthwhile when I was in software and hardware.
There's a saying:
A few months in the laboratory (or coding, in your case) can often save you a few hours in in the library.
The hard part is actually being able to keep up (i.e. knowing the language, which journals to trust, what's going on etc). Since you are following the literature closely you should not abandon it. Those that don't follow it will definitely have a hard time starting, though.
P.
I tend to keep up with the latest ACM/IEEE published papers. But in 20+ years of IT programming I've only met a handful of others that do anything similar.
:-)
Basically I read an interesting paper, suggest we use some small part of it at work, everybody laughs. Two years later I'm called in to explain what the hell I was talking about as it's now seen as the thing to do. (sigh)
For instance, I recently commented that augmented reality is ready to make a move into the corporate world. Laughter all round.
The very same day I was asked to re-explain the benefits of open source as the CEO had been told it would reduce the cost of IT. I just gave the same chat I did three years ago
However I think I am in a minority (and really I'm not in IT; working for a consulting firm ATM). I have always been interested in it, have done some (published) research of my own in the past, and plan on applying to PhD programs next year, so it makes sense for me. It doesn't affect most people in "The Real World", unless they are working on the cutting edge, or are doing research for commercial organizations.
And really, a lot of papers out there are crap. Interesting but, in the end, useless to anyone anywhere. However, there is the occasional gem, something that is both novel and practical, and I keep reading all of the normal journals in order to find those few. Consider just a couple of examples in the crypto space (which is where I do most of my research); the MD5 breaks last year, and the RC4 key scheduling attacks which led to AirSnort and friends. Both of those are problems that I actually get questions from customers about (which feels weird, because I'm the crypto freak in the group and it almost never comes up)
Well, it was a long time ago when I was a coder, but I not only read Knuth, our team used his code structures as the fundamental design of portions of our software. We turned some of his code into libraries so we didn't have to reinvent Knuth's wheel over and over. Our basic required-reading-and-comprehension bookset was Knuth's Vol 3 Searching and Sorting, and Wirth's "Data Structures + Algorithms = Programs." Our design and code teams spent a lot of time discussing these books and implementing the ideas, and our code always turned out really clean.
Do you need to keep up? No. That is not to say you should not. For starters this community should no better than most the speed at which this industry changes. Knowing what is coming and maybe even more importantly what is on it's way out can make or break a career.
There are many markets where it really is necessary to reach that next tier of success. If you want to be a grunt, for now or for life, stay as a grunt. Not that you cannot be a successful grunt, but you are handicapped to be one without that knowledge. Your education, continuing education that is, is what gives you the abilities to see what others can't and thus to go where others can't. That's the difference between programming and application design. Trust me, cubicles are nice, but window offices are better.
If you want to take the road less filled with research don't start your own business, don't invest your money, and enjoy your cubicle. There's a good chance that there will be a nice fellow a cubicle over waiting on that ideal FORTRAN contract to come along.
Seriously though, this knowledge is what allows me to do things better than the other guy. It's what makes my brand and to what I owe my success. One more note of advice. When given the opportunity to teach take it. As a primary job fuction or not (professor or simply project team member) teaching will guarantee you rewards to your own personal education found in no other way.
Most IT workers don't have the necessary time and money to study academic literature, as they prefer to invest all of their resources to survive in the modern fast-pace high-demanding corporate world. As one of my university professors told us, only the rich have time to actually learn the sciences and study academic literature. If you need to work in order to have food on the table, you will prefer to study something that will benefit you immediately, such as industry white papers and how-to guides. In the modern world where everyone is seeking the money, scientific papers often won't benefit you for years, until you find a way to commercialise the new findings. This is exactly what the corporations want: Lots of IT workers trained in programming and networking but without the slightest knowledge of the underlying sciences. Corporations don't like philosophers and scientists, because they cannot be easily manipulated by the boss; they want you to be a code monkey. But knowledge liberates, and code monkeys can take their life in their hands if they learn the sciences and become philosophers. This is part of what I want to achieve with my site, Wikinerds.org: to assist those who are seeking liberation through knowledge.