Clik here to view.
Design by Contract: ACM Webinar this Thursday
A third ACM webinar this year (after two on agile methods): I will be providing a general introduction to Design by Contract. The date is this coming Thursday, September 17, and the time is noon New...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Danke sehr!
(A version of this article also appeared on the CACM blog.) Miracles happen! Many months ago I accepted, perhaps too fast, a kind invitation to talk at the European Computer Science Summit, the annual...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Software for Robotics: 2016 LASER summer school, 10-18 September, Elba
The 2016 session of the LASER summer school, now in its 13th edition, has just been announced. The theme is new for the school, and timely: software for robotics. Below is the announcement. School...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Robotics and concurrency
Many robotics applications are by nature concurrent; in his ongoing PhD work, Andrey Rusakov [1] is building a comprehensive concurrent robot programming framework, Roboscoop [2], based on the SCOOP...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Agile MOOC starts this week
In spite of all the interest in both agile methods and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) there are few courses on agile methods; I know only of some specialized MOOCs focused on a particular language...
View ArticleClik here to view.
AutoProof workshop: Verification As a Matter of Course
The AutoProof technology pursues the goal of “Verification As a Matter Of Course”, integrated into the EVE development environment. (The AutoProof project page here; see particularly the online...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ubu Roi
The character of Ubu, created by Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), deserves to be better known. The Wikipedia entry on Jarry’s 1896 play Ubu Roi (Ubu the King) explains: According to Jane Taylor, “the central...
View ArticleClik here to view.
From our “Problems you would like to have” department
Headline of a recent article in the Financial Times, part of a supplement on “Investing in Germany”: Germany’s coffers are overflowing but optimism is wearing thin Oh, the humanity! On reflection,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The longest flight
The Orbitz page for booking a flight itinerary has an interesting menu option: Longest duration? If you find that the direct route is too short, you can always add a stop in Vladivostok. Under a few...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Software for robotics: LASER summer school, Elba Island, 9-17 September
The LASER summer school, now in its 13th edition, will take place this September (postponed from last year). The theme is new for the school, and timely: software for robotics. Below is the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The mythical Brooks law
(First published on the CACM blog.) A book by Laurent Bossavit [1] lists what he calls “leprechauns” of software engineering: pearls of conventional wisdom that do not necessarily survive objective...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The coming European renaissance
The unspeakable in flight of the uneatable. One of the sad scenes of today’s Europe does not even take place in continental Europe, and does not even look sad. It happens every Friday afternoon at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Об опыте иностранца, говорящего по-русски
Когда-то очень давно великий советский ученый Андрей Петрович Ершов мне рассказал следующий анекдот. Действие происходит в московском метро. Стоит бабушка, а за ней высокий студент из Университета...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The perils of feature interaction
One of the most delicate aspects of design is feature interaction. As users, we suffer daily from systems offering features that individually make sense but clash with each other. In my agile book [1]...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Feature interactions, continued
Microsoft Office tools offer features for (1) spelling correction and (2) multi-language support. They are not very good at working together, another example of the perils of feature interaction....
View ArticleClik here to view.
LASER summer school on software for robotics: last call for registration
Much of the progress in robotics is due to software advances, and software issues remain at the heart of the formidable challenges that remain. The 2017 LASER summer school, held in September in Elba,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Concurrency/verification positions at Politecnico di Milano
As part of the continuation of the ERC Advanced Investigator Grant project “Concurrency Made Easy” (started at ETH Zurich, see the project pages at cme.ethz.ch, I have positions at Politecnico di...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New session of online Agile course starts now
Just about a year ago I posted this announcement about my just released Agile course: In spite of all the interest in both agile methods and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) there are few courses on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Split the Root: a little design pattern
Many programs take “execution arguments” which the program users provide at the start of execution. In EiffelStudio you can enter them under Execution -> Execution parameters. The program can access...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Devops (the concept, and a workshop announcement)
One of the most significant recent developments in software engineering is the concept of Devops*. Dismissing the idea as “just the latest buzzword” would be wrong. It may be a buzzword but it reflects...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Small and big pleasures
(Reproduced from my CACM blog.) One of the small pleasures of life is to win a technical argument with a graduate student. You feel good, as well you should. It is only human to be want to be right....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blockchains, bitcoin and distributed trust: LASER school lineup complete
The full lineup of speakers at the 2018 LASER summer school on Software for Blockchains, Bitcoin and Distributed Trust is now ready, with the announcement of a new speaker, Primavera De Filippi from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Before I start screaming once again…
… at my would-be coauthors, would someone please tell them, and every non-native-English-speaker-but-aspiring-English-author, to read this? Please, please, please, please, please. In English the verb...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In pursuit and in flight
There is currently in Kazan an exhibition of the works of the Tatar painter Baki Urmanche (1897-1990). One of his early drawings is entitled “The painter, the muse, and death” [1]: It makes a good...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Emerald wishes
On display in the exhibition mentioned in the previous article is a citation, from Urmanche’s writings, of an aphorism by Qol Ghali (who, as I did not know, was a medieval Muslim Volga poet). It reads...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The end of software engineering and the last methodologist
(Reposted from the CACM blog [*].) Software engineering was never a popular subject. It started out as “programming methodology”, evoking the image of bearded middle-aged men telling you with a Dutch,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Festina retro
We “core” computer scientists and software engineers always whine that our research themes forever prevent us, to the delight of our physicist colleagues but unjustly, from reaching the gold standard...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Towards empirical answers to important software engineering questions
(Adapted from a two-part article on the Communications of the ACM blog.) 1 The rise of empirical software engineering One of the success stories of software engineering research in recent decades has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Un po’ tondo
Every Mozart study states that his last Symphony, “Jupiter” (Köchel 551), is one of humankind’s greatest musical achievements. Every description of the symphony indicates that the first movement...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blue hair and tenure track
Interview (in Russian) of Nadia Polikarpova (who proved the correctness of the EiffelBase 2 library in her PhD at ETH and is now an assistant professor at UCSD) on the site of her original university,...
View Article
