I went and did a PhD in software engineering after a couple of decades working in industry and now back working in industry. Thus, I offer my comments in hindsight.

The primary focus of academic research is to extend the knowledge and disseminate that knowledge in the form of papers. Researchers are assessed on the basis of the number of papers they write and grants that they procure. The evaluation of the work is very much a result of the peer review process based on those papers and not the programs that might have been written in support of the core research.

The general observation is that most programs written as part of some research project are a hack written to address a very specific need and fast. A common gripe is that much research is difficult to reproduce because the programs are not freely shared and/or written for non-portable environments.