Yes, this is a development that has happened over time and has become pretty severe. Michael Stonebraker has written/talked about this in the context of DBMS r

Yes, this is a development that has happened over time and has become pretty severe. Michael Stonebraker has written/talked about this in the context of DBMS research, but to me the same issues are applicable to other fields as well. Slides: http://www.jfsowa.com/ikl/Stonebraker.pdf http://www.jfsowa.com/ikl/Stonebraker.pdf Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJFKl_5JTnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJFKl_5JTnA In short, the incentives/requirements in academia have changed so that producing working software is no longer feasible. He says he got his PhD with exactly 0 publications, became a professor with 5. Nowadays, you have to have 5 publications to get your PhD and god knows how many to become professor. That means 1 paper successfully published per year if you want to get your PhD in 5 years. Doing software is not possible, it is too risky and just takes too long. There's a lot more, I highly recommend the talk!