Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

Currently Juggling

Monday, March 15th, 2010

I keep telling my students not to over-commit themselves. It's a shame I don't take my own advice :-). Here's what I've currently got on the go: Software Carpentry teaches basic software development skills to scientists and engineers. I have 80% of the funding I need to spend ...

What’s Wrong With This Plan?

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

My grad student Mike Conley decided several months ago to look at code review for his master's thesis. After exploring a few ideas (including badges and achievements for reviews), he has put together a plan that might tie several things together quite neatly. He and I would both appreciate your ...

Rory Tulk on Software Testing

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Rory Tulk finished his M.Sc. with me a couple of weeks ago, and has posted a summary of his thesis on his blog. It was a solid piece of research; I'm pleased to have had a chance to work with him.

Pre-Commit Continuous Integration

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Mike Conley (one of my grad students) is converging on a thesis topic: pre-commit continuous integration. If you have thoughts, he'd enjoy hearing them.

More on Mining

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Several people have recently linked to Diederik van Liere's talk "Learning from 10 yrs of Bugzilla data". If you're interested in that kind of thing, there's a whole sub-field in software engineering devoted to mining information about actual development practices from various sources. The best two places to start are: Kagdi, Collard, ...

Two More Thumbs Up

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

I blogged last week about Sahoo et al's paper on automated bug diagnosis and Gutiart et al's survey of performance management techniques for web apps. This week has brought two more good ones to my desk: Artzi, Dolby, Tip, and Pistoia: "Practical Fault Localization for Dynamic Web Applications". The authors have ...

Someone Leaves School, Someone Comes to School

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Three of my grad students---Aran Donohue, Jason Montojo, and Rory Tulk---are wrapping up their MSc's this month. Coincidentally (OK, not really, the academic calendar being what it is), my other two students are converging on research topics. Mike Conley has got the code review bug in a big way, and ...

Two Thumbs Up, One Thumb Down

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Three recent papers: Sahoo, Criswell, and Adve: "Towards Automated Bug Diagnosis: An Empirical Study of Reported Software Bugs in Server Applications".  Looked at bugs reported in six large web server apps, and discovered that most could be reproduced deterministically by replaying just a few recent inputs (in most cases, just one). ...

Nothing to See Here, Folks—Move Along, Move Along

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

Like a lot of people, I received email a few days ago from Ivar Jacobson about SEMAT (Software Engineering Method and Theory), a new initiative whose "...goal is to re-found software engineering as a rigorous discipline." I can't think of a better response than Jorge Aranda's.

ICSE 2010 Co-Events

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

The International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) is being held in South Africa next year. Their web site is already up, and they've just announced all the workshops and whatnot that are being held along with it. It's quite a list, and some of the acronyms are very ...