- Walter Tichy explained several important aspects, which I need to take into account while designing my next empirical study.
- In addition, Natalia Juristo pointed out several things I will keep in mind during this design in order to make sure others can repeat it.
- Tim Menzies gave a very good introduction into the ins and outs of data-mining (in such a way I actually want to try it out)
- Bertrand Meyer (and his students) made me aware of some testing techniques I forgot about.
- The presentation of Joshua Bloch was, for me, less relevant from a PhD point-of-view, but his thoughts about good API design are extremely interesting from a developers point of view.
- It was really fun (and interesting) to hear Barry Boehm explain his research on estimation models and how empirical SE can be integrated into education.
- Last but not least, the presentations of Victor Basili contained a lot of stuff which I believe is relevant for what we are doing at SIG.
Attending LASER 2010
Today I managed to go through my notes of the 2010 edition of the LASER summerschool series. While doing this I realized that, apart from the fancy hotel, the good food, the nice people and the great weather, the trip also had a high educational value!
A magazine article
This week I received some hard-copies of the July/August issue of the IEEE Software magazine. This issue contains an article called
A Lightweight Sanity Check for Implemented Architectures
which is written by Arie van Deursen and yours truly.
The article looks really great, it has multiple colours, pull-quotes, a side-bar and pictures! And although good looks are sometimes deceiving, this article also contains some pretty interesting content (if I do say so myself).
As expected, it describes a check-list which can be used to get a quick overview of the state of the implemented architecture of a system. Such an overview helps in determining which parts of the architecture can be improved, or confirms that everything is in good shape. I believe that both outcomes are interesting, so I recommend everybody to give LiSCIA a try!
A Lightweight Sanity Check for Implemented Architectures
which is written by Arie van Deursen and yours truly.
The article looks really great, it has multiple colours, pull-quotes, a side-bar and pictures! And although good looks are sometimes deceiving, this article also contains some pretty interesting content (if I do say so myself).
As expected, it describes a check-list which can be used to get a quick overview of the state of the implemented architecture of a system. Such an overview helps in determining which parts of the architecture can be improved, or confirms that everything is in good shape. I believe that both outcomes are interesting, so I recommend everybody to give LiSCIA a try!
A 5 star system!
My presentation on JFall 2009 went very well, there was a big audience (they barely fit into the room) and there was lot's of interaction going on during the talk. People where asking critical questions and provided good comments.
The topic seemed to make people pretty enthusiastic. Especially the examples of a really complex method, the biggest method and a method with a lot of parameters.
In the presentation I answered the following two questions: 1) what is a 5-star system, and 2) how can I get one? The answer to the first question is: "a system that receives the highest rating in the TUVit Trusted Product Maintainability Certification". I explained what this certificate entails and how the complete procedure works (something which is also summarized over here).
The second question is answered by the following mantra: "make sure that your code is small, simple and specific".
If you cannot make your code small, simple and specific, take a step back and look at the abstract picture (the overall design) of your project. Why does this design disallow you to make your code small, simple and specific?
Can you model stuff differently? Is there a way to abstract over details that clutter your code? How can this type of functionality be grouped in a better way? Try to determine why the design (or your framework) is restricting you and solve that problem. The result will be a more maintainable system.
Naturally, these answers are just the core of the talk, a more complete overview of the presentation is provided by the Atos Application and Development blog (Dutch). For those interested, the slides can be found here.
All and all a nice experience, on to JSpring 2010!?
The topic seemed to make people pretty enthusiastic. Especially the examples of a really complex method, the biggest method and a method with a lot of parameters.
In the presentation I answered the following two questions: 1) what is a 5-star system, and 2) how can I get one? The answer to the first question is: "a system that receives the highest rating in the TUVit Trusted Product Maintainability Certification". I explained what this certificate entails and how the complete procedure works (something which is also summarized over here).
The second question is answered by the following mantra: "make sure that your code is small, simple and specific".
If you cannot make your code small, simple and specific, take a step back and look at the abstract picture (the overall design) of your project. Why does this design disallow you to make your code small, simple and specific?
Can you model stuff differently? Is there a way to abstract over details that clutter your code? How can this type of functionality be grouped in a better way? Try to determine why the design (or your framework) is restricting you and solve that problem. The result will be a more maintainable system.
Naturally, these answers are just the core of the talk, a more complete overview of the presentation is provided by the Atos Application and Development blog (Dutch). For those interested, the slides can be found here.
All and all a nice experience, on to JSpring 2010!?
A 5 star system?
This week I received notice that my proposal for a presentation at the J-Fall 2009 was accepted. So on the 11th of November I will be discussing what a 5-star system is and how to get it. For those of you who cannot wait to find out what it means to get stars for your system can take a quick look over here.
The full abstract of the presentation can be found here (in Dutch). If you want to attend you should register yourself over here.
Hope to see you in Bussum!
The full abstract of the presentation can be found here (in Dutch). If you want to attend you should register yourself over here.
Hope to see you in Bussum!
I present, you present ....
Last week I was in Canada for the ICSM 2009 (combined with a very relaxing vacation btw) where I got to present my first paper of my PhD. The room was a filled with about 50 attendees and, even though I was a bit nervous, the presentation went pretty well. There where some interesting questions and comments, and even a small discussion that had to be taken off-line (which is now again on-line).
During the rest of the ICSM I talked to various people about the presentation and the paper and it seems that the topic certainly appeals to several people. Which is good to know since I think I will be spending some more time in researching it.
For those of you that are interested in the slides, please take a look at the slides page of the ICSM, or just follow the direct link.
To be honest, these slides are not exactly the ones I used during the presentation. I cheated a little bit by splitting a slide 22 in two slides, just so that you can actual see the contents of a table. In the original version there was an animation that removes the numbers before showing the crosses, but this behavior is not transferred to the pdf-version of the slides. I can tell you from personal experience that it will increase your blood pressure if you notice this when you are giving your presentation.
Anyhow, at least I learned now to check the pdf-version of my slides before I give I a presentation, just in case the laptop on which I made the presentation does not play nicely with the available beamer :)
During the rest of the ICSM I talked to various people about the presentation and the paper and it seems that the topic certainly appeals to several people. Which is good to know since I think I will be spending some more time in researching it.
For those of you that are interested in the slides, please take a look at the slides page of the ICSM, or just follow the direct link.
To be honest, these slides are not exactly the ones I used during the presentation. I cheated a little bit by splitting a slide 22 in two slides, just so that you can actual see the contents of a table. In the original version there was an animation that removes the numbers before showing the crosses, but this behavior is not transferred to the pdf-version of the slides. I can tell you from personal experience that it will increase your blood pressure if you notice this when you are giving your presentation.
Anyhow, at least I learned now to check the pdf-version of my slides before I give I a presentation, just in case the laptop on which I made the presentation does not play nicely with the available beamer :)