Hours of Work, Minutes of Code: An Investigation Into Software Development Applications and Computer Science Education for Engineers and Scientists

The need for programming skills is becoming increasingly ubiquitous within the fields of science and engineering. However, new professionals entering their respective fields, in addition to practicing professionals with years of experience, lack the education and exposure necessary to effectively apply software development to their work. In order to promote the increased use of software development within scientific and engineering fields, this research project primarily seeks to survey, characterize and categorize applications of software development. Additionally, it aims to understand how students interested in science and engineering might best be motivated to learn programming. An initial review of literature will be supplemented with original data collection through interviews and a questionnaire in order to reach research objectives. Data collection will allow for a comprehensive review of the current uses of software development for personal or intra-institutional use, as opposed to commercially produced software packages, and will shed light on the state of computer science education among students pursuing non-computer science majors. This review of practical applications, in addition to research-founded recommendations, will aid educators and professionals in advocating for increased participation in computer science curricula, and thus contribute to a more thorough and grounded preparation of the next generation of engineers and scientists entering the workforce.

Introduction

Software development involves the creation of programs: sets of instructions that perform a specified task. A program could serve to analyze data, display an interface to a user or perform machine learning, among many other applications. Professionals in all fields use commercially or publicly available software, such as the Microsoft Office suite, the Google Suite and GitHub, in addition to more field-specific software, such as ArcMap or ISIS, which are commonly used in the planetary science community [1]. However, professionals may also develop their own software, or use software developed by colleagues, to specialize their programs and tailor them to their needs [1].