Tag: Software Engineering

Mostly posts relating to software design and architecture.

The new dynamics of strategy: sense-making in a complex and complicated world

~ adriancolyer ~ 8 Comments

The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world Kurtz & Snowden et al., IBM Systems Journal, 2003 Tomorrow we’ll be taking a look at a paper recommended by Linda Rising during her keynote at GOTO Copenhagen earlier this month. Today’s choice provides the necessary background to the Cynefin (Kin-eh-vun) framework on … Continue reading The new dynamics of strategy: sense-making in a complex and complicated world

Interactions of individual and pair programmers with an intelligent tutoring system for computer science

~ adriancolyer ~ 5 Comments

Interactions of individual and pair programmers with an intelligent tutoring system for computer science Harsley et al., SIGCSE'17 A short and easy paper for today, which examines the difference between pair programming and working individually in an educational context. The study involves 116 students participating in a series of seven linked-list programming tasks designed to … Continue reading Interactions of individual and pair programmers with an intelligent tutoring system for computer science

A dissection of the test-driven development process: does it really matter to test-first or test-last?

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A dissection of the test-driven development process: does it really matter to test-first or to test-last? Fucci et al., ICSE'17 Here we have a study with a really interesting aim - to find out which aspects of TDD are most significant when it comes to developer productivity and code quality. What we'd really love to … Continue reading A dissection of the test-driven development process: does it really matter to test-first or test-last?

Decoding the representation of code in the brain: an fMRI study of code review and expertise

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Decoding the representation of code in the brain: an fMRI study of code review and expertise Floyd et al., ICSE'17 fMRI studies have been used to explore how our brains encode expertise in physical tasks involving specialised motor skills (for example, playing golf), in memory development (for example, London taxi drivers), and in mental skills … Continue reading Decoding the representation of code in the brain: an fMRI study of code review and expertise

Ethically aligned design

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The IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems. Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision For Prioritizing Wellbeing With Artificial Intelligence And Autonomous Systems, Version 1. IEEE, 2016. http://standards.ieee.org/develop/indconn/ec/autonomous_systems.html.   Something a little different for today... the IEEE recently put out a first version of their "Ethically Aligned Design" report for public … Continue reading Ethically aligned design

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: a pragmatic guide to assessing empirical evaluations

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The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: A pragmatic guide to assessing empirical evaluations Blackburn et al. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 2016 Yesterday we looked at some of the ways analysts may be fooled into thinking they've found a statistically significant result when in fact they haven't. Today's paper … Continue reading The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: a pragmatic guide to assessing empirical evaluations

REX: A development platform and online learning approach for runtime emergent software systems

~ adriancolyer

REX: A development platform and online learning approach for runtime emergent software systems Porter et al. OSDI 2016 If you can get beyond the (for my taste, ymmv) somewhat grand claims and odd turns of phrase (e.g., “how the software ‘feels’ at a given point in time” => metrics) then there’s something quite interesting at … Continue reading REX: A development platform and online learning approach for runtime emergent software systems

Designing software for ease of extension and contraction

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Designing software for ease of extension and contraction Parnas, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 1979 A couple of weeks ago we looked at ‘A design methodology for reliable software systems’. David Parnas posted a comment (thank you!) giving some more insight into the history of Dijkstra’s “levels of abstraction” concept: This paper followed Dijkstra in … Continue reading Designing software for ease of extension and contraction