[Python-Dev] Ph.D. dissertation ideas?

[Dennis Allison]

Brett,

Where are you doing your Phd and who will be your likely supervisor? 
It does make a difference.

Your dissertation idea list seems to me to focus on implementation
projects and not on research.  Usually a dissertation proceeds from a
hypothesis leading to an experiment, some measurements, and conclusions.  
Many universities tacitly expect a theorem and associated proof. The goal
of dissertation research is a completed approved dissertation, not some
intergalactic all encompassing contribution to human knowledge.  
Dissertation research should, IMHO, focus on a small, manageable problem.

Frequently, universities have a large cooperative project involving many 
graduate students, each of whom research a small, well defined topic areas 
related to the larger project.   Is this the case for your dissertation?

What are your interests?  Are you interested in language structure, 
language implementation, the formal interface between languages and 
applications, or what.   

Like most folks who lurk on this list, I have my list of things I'd like 
to see someone research.  Tell us a bit more and I am sure you'll get lots 
of us to share.

-d

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Brett Cannon wrote:

> It is time once again in my educational career to come to python-dev
> for help for major project ideas.  This time, though, it is for my
> Ph.D. dissertation (and thus can have larger scope than my masters
> thesis) but there are funding restrictions (and thus only certain
> areas I have possible funding for).
> 
> First off, there are two areas where I have possible funding: XML
> integration into programming languages and game scripting support (I
> have a third, AOP for anything, but  I don't think AOP is a good match
> for Python and thus not considering it for Python work).  The XML
> integration I have no direct ideas since I don't use XML.  There is
> the possibility of doing something like the LINQ project
> (http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/linq/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/linqprojectovw.asp)
> or something, but I don't know how useful that could be.  It would
> have to be just as generic, though, as the LINQ project in terms of
> working with intefaces to be Pythonic so it might turn out to be more
> about language support for querying data.
> 
> For the game scripting, trying out the active objects for Python is a
> possibility (or something else that would help with concurrency). 
> Since that could allow for agent objects to be more concurrent it can
> be argued that it would help with game scripting.  I don't have any
> other ideas for the area of game scripting support.
> 
> Now I am not locked down to these areas, but they are what I have
> possible grant money for.  If through some miracle someone out there
> wants to fund my Ph.D. and wants something else worked on for Python,
> don't be shy.  =)  Unfortunately I don't think the PSF is up for
> funding my Ph.D., else I would say I would work on whatever python-dev
> decided they wanted to worked on that could be done as a dissertation.
> 
> Anyway, any ideas are appreciated.  There is no rush on this, either. 
> Just getting this out there now while I am tentatively exploring
> possible topics.
> 
> -Brett
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