View source for Computer Science at GE Research

When I look back at some GE Research software efforts, the projects that gained
most notoriety and respect outside the Company were usually less
enthusiastically received within the Company.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_programming Generic Programming] - a basic computer science breakthrough, now used
and accepted by the world's software community. Enabled at GE Research by the
"academic" Computer Science Branch. ''Key GE Research Players:'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stepanov Alex Stepanov], [http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~musser/ Dave Musser].

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming Object-Oriented Modelling] - at the time (1984), a new way to manage software
complexity. There was some GE Aerospace acceptance but the technology was far too advanced for the
Company when it was developed. Now, OO is the basis for almost all software
systems. The book, Object-Oriented Modelling and Design (written by 5
GE Research authors) has sold over 220,000 copies world-wide. The book has over [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Object-oriented+modeling+and+design&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33 9000 citations] on google scholar. ''Key GE Research Players:'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rumbaugh Jim Rumbaugh], [http://modelsoftcorp.com/ Mike Blaha], Bill Premerlani, Fred Eddy and Bill Lorensen.

Open Source Toolkits - GE Research produced the [http://vtk.org Visualization Toolkit, VTK]. When
we started VTK in 1994, the term open source did not exist. VTK was fostered
early on by management that trusted the vision we had. VTK was also supported
by some GE Medical Systems managers. Certainly, VTK is much more accepted and
successful outside of GE than inside.
''Key GE Research Players:'' Will Schroeder, Ken Martin and Bill Lorensen.

Government funded software - [http://www.itk.org The Insight Toolkit, ITK] was started and is still supported by
NIH National Library of Medicine. The original concept was conceived
by Terry Yoo (a student) and Bill Lorensen while Lorensen was on his Coolidge
sabbatical in 1995. A from-scratch registration and segmentation toolkit that
is still vital after over 10 years. Much of ITK was built with GE Research
technology (object-oriented, extreme programming, pipelines, toolkit
approach). GE Research management supported it in varying degrees over the
years, but never really appreciated its impact.
''Key GE Research Players:'' Jim Miller, Dan Blezek, Bill Lorensen

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming Extreme Programming] - The Visualization and Computer Vision (VCV) group at GE Research was an early adopter and, driven by six sigma, focused on software quality control and distributed software
engineering. The VTK/ITK approach is now used as a model for many scientific and biomedical
software systems. The [http://www.cdash.org/CDash/index.php?project=VTK VTK] and [http://www.cdash.org/CDash/index.php?project=Insight ITK] quality dashboards still receive
kudos from the open source community. [http://www.kitware.com Kitware] has enhanced and expanded the software process with a number of tools including [http://cmake.org cmake], [http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_Testing_With_CTest ctest] and [http://cdash.org cdash].
Key GE Research players: Jim Miller, Tim Kelliher, Dan Blezek, Bill Lorensen.

OpenGE - The Visualization and Computer Vision Group at GE Research started this grass roots effort to expose GE software
engineers to modern collaborative tools. We leveraged the then
successful [http://sourceforge.net/ sourceforge].
''Key GE Research Players:'' Jim Miller, Bill Lorensen, Tim Kelliher, Bill Leue, Dan Blezek.

It is interesting that the last four and to some extent OO Modeling,
were all started in the Visualization and Computer Vision (VCV) group, an algorithm versus software group. These were
technologies that we needed to make our algorithmic software easier to
write, maintain and share. The tools and techniques accidentally became useful outside of
the initial domain.