Awakening: Modern Challenges and Opportunities of Software Engineering Research

TL;DR

This paper discusses the evolution of software engineering research, highlighting current challenges due to proprietary and industrial systems, and proposes strategic directions like collaborations and new funding models to address these issues.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of the field's current state, identifies structural challenges, and suggests practical strategies for future research advancement.

Findings

Shift from accessible to proprietary systems complicates research

Incremental methods are insufficient for current challenges

Proposes industrial collaborations and new funding models as solutions

Abstract

Software engineering research benefited for decades from openly available tools, accessible systems, and problems that could be studied at modest scale. Today, many of the most relevant software systems are large, proprietary, and embedded in industrial contexts that are difficult to access or replicate in academia. We review how the field reached this point, identify structural challenges facing contemporary research, and argue that incremental methodological refinement is insufficient. We discuss practical directions forward, including industrial PhDs, long-term industry-academia collaborations, larger research teams, moonshot projects, and changes to funding and evaluation practices.