A local homebrew shop opened, so I felt the only decent thing was to buy a kit to support them.  So, a Mangrove Jack wheat beer, +1kg dextrose + some Morgan’s Hallertau hops.  O.G. 1.042-ish.

There has been controversy around p-values in recent years, often linked to issues with reproducibility in psychology.  p-values are also often reported in empirical software engineering papers. We haven’t yet seen widespread public controversy about software engineering studies, but that’s not because there aren’t problems!
The American Statistical Association has just released a clarifying statement about p-values. (pdf)
p-values are not inherently broken. The problems are about mis-interpreting them, about poor study design and practice, and about poor reporting. The ASA statement seems like a useful contribution to the debate.

In February I moved back to NICTA after what proved to be an interesting sabbatical year working at Saluda Medical.  Saluda is going strong – they have great technology, and very recently closed a $10Mill VC round which will lead towards major clinical trials of their implanted spinal cord stimulator in the US.
I learned a lot working at Saluda, which is always fun – I hadn’t previously worked alongside mechanical engineers on product design, nor alongside electrical engineers doing signal processing, nor thought much about manufacturing process and product validation for manufactured devices. My role included work defining user requirements, system specifications, system architecture, system validation, and system verification. But perhaps the most interesting thing was risk management, which is central to systems engineering and is highly interdisciplinary. The system I was involved with is now undergoing clinical trial in the US. I also contributed to my first (very cool) patent application, and helped co-author a (conference) publication on placement of paddle leads for spinal cord stimulation. There is perhaps another (journal) publication in the works on adverse events for spinal cord stimulation. And I had the opportunity to learn Python, which was fun, and to learn more about Microsoft Word Interop scripting than I ever wanted to know.
The medical device industry has an interesting regulatory environment.  Of course it’s very conscious about risks and ethics. However, there is a surprising amount of flexibility about how companies can choose to engineer medical devices. Nonetheless, when a company has said how they’ll demonstrate safety and/or effectiveness (and having had that plan approved), regulatory monitoring and review is a powerful way of making sure that happens. That’s especially pointed when companies are selling medical devices (which Saluda hasn’t yet started to do).

In January, the the journal Synthese accepted and published the first of two papers of mine on the philosophy of engineering.  The second installment is now also accepted and published: “Critical rationalism and engineering: methodology” (author’s preprint here). Woot!  In the new paper I use the three worlds schema from the first paper to look at possible sources and responses to falsification of engineering theories.  I also discuss the growth of knowledge in engineering.  Finally, I talk about assurance in engineering.  There are perhaps more open questions than answers, but the questions are important and interesting.
Assurance is key for engineering.  Engineers design and create artefacts that other people use.  But engineers don’t just throw artefacts “over the wall” (or into the market) – they also warrant that those artefacts can be used to meet people’s needs. Those assurances don’t just get made up.  They are backed by explicit justifications – arguments using empirically-validated engineering theories.  For safety-critical systems, if those arguments are invalid or those theories are false, people will die or get hurt.  That’s why it’s worth understanding engineering epistemology.
 

Today I’m starting in a new role as Systems Engineering team lead at Saluda Medical – a medical device startup company. We’re working on a new technology for closed loop control for spinal cord stimulation that will target the treatment of Chronic Neuropathic Pain.  This is a great group of people and a technology with huge potential.  Saluda Medical is a spin-out from NICTA, where I’ve been working for the past ten years.  I wasn’t part of the Implant Systems team before they spun out, but I was cheering loudly from the side-lines, so I’m very excited to be part of the team now.
NICTA’s been a fantastic place to do world-leading research, and to think about how that can lead to international impact and ultimately benefit Australia.  I’m happy I’ll still retain an association with NICTA – mostly to help close out some PhD student supervision but also to finish off a few pieces of research collaboration.
It’s sort of ironic that the very week my first philosophy of engineering paper was published was the same week I started the move back to industry!  But it’s all about engineering.

What is engineering? Sometimes people think engineering is just the same as science, but in a new paper on the philosophy of engineering (preprint here), I argue why that’s not the case. Engineering is similar, but different to Science, and its epistemological issues are also similar but different.
I got into this question because of problems in assurance for software engineering and formal methods that are essentially philosophical problems. But having work available on the philosophy of engineering available should also help with perennial questions like “Is Software Engineering a field of engineering?” and “Is Computer Science a science?”.

Wow – more than a year between homebrews, again. I’ve almost depleted my stores, which gives you some idea of how much I’ve been drinking and socialising over the past couple of years (not much of either). I find old homebrew basically gets better with age, but maybe I’m pushing it with some of the 2 year-old beer. Anyway, again (but not by design) I’m doing a Cooper’s Heritage Lager, but this time with a Cooper’s Light Malt tin as the adjunct. O.G. is around 1.042.

Almost a whole year since my last brew (which has worked out great, BTW).  Inspired by a colleague’s homebrew at Friday afternoon drinks, I’ve dragged a kit off the shelf to start another brew.  This time it’s a Cooper’s Heritage Lager, with 600g Dextrose and 400g Maltodextrin.  Nothing fancy.  O.G. is somewhere around 1.042 to 1.044.

Software Engineering would be a more mature discipline if we had spent more time reading What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History rather than A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.

Don was an Apple II kid, and he credits Apple with helping him dive so deep and so early into writing software.  I never had an Apple II, but I got a taste of that kind of experience with the Vic-20 at home, and the BBC computer room at school.
But then, we upgraded our home computer to the Apple Mac.  My experience on the Apple Mac was exactly opposite to Don’s on the Apple II.
The Mac was the start (well, after Lisa) of Apple’s focus on the creativity of the users of computers, rather than on the creativity of software developers.  The Mac had amazing useability and rich interactive applications, but there was no out-of-the-box development environment.  Even when years later I did get the MPW, there was a killer learning curve to create simple apps that conformed to Apple’s strict UI guidelines.  Hypercard (especially Hypertalk) was ahead of its time and did encourage bespoke coding creativity, but then Apple ditched it.
Apple’s success is due to their user and customer focus, but ever since the Apple Mac they’ve been mostly hostile to developers.