Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog
Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and more
I am giving a “distinguished lecture” at the University of California, Santa Barbara, January 10 (Friday, tomorrow) at 14. The title is A Comprehensive Approach to Requirements Engineering. The abstract and rest of the information are here. I will spend the last few minutes of the talk discussing other current developments (verification, concurrency).
Software engineering has improved a lot in the past couple of decades, but there remains an area where the old doomsday style of starting a software engineering paper (software crisis, everything is rotten…) still fits: requirements engineering. Just see the chasm between textbook advice and the practice of most projects. I have written on requirements … Read more
Some important concepts of software engineering, established over the years, are not widely known in the community. One use of this blog is to provide tutorials on such overlooked ideas. An earlier article covered one pertaining to project management: the Shortest Possible Schedule property . Here is another, this time in the area of requirements engineering, … Read more
The best way to make software requirements precise is to use one of the available “formal” approaches. Many have been proposed; I am not aware of a general survey published so far. Over the past two years, we have been working on a comprehensive survey of the use of formality in requirements, of which we … Read more
Recently I had a need to collect my education-related publications, so I went through my publication list and extracted items devoted to issues of learning computer science (informatics) and software engineering. There turned out to be far more than I expected; I did not think of myself as primarily an education researcher but it seems … Read more
Some of the folk wisdom going around in software engineering, often cluessly repeated for decades, is just wrong. It can be particularly damaging when it affects key aspects of software development and is contradicted by solid scientific evidence. The present discussion covers a question that meets both of these conditions: whether it makes sense to … Read more
Over the past few days I have come across several people who told me they want to attend the Frontiers In Software Engineering Education (FISEE) workshop in Villebrumier, 11-13 November, but have not registered yet. If that’s your case please register right now because: The number of spots is limited (it’s a residential event, everyone … Read more
The next event at the LASER center in Villebrumier (Toulouse area, Southwest France) is FISEE, Frontiers in Software Engineering Education, see the web site. This small-scale workshop, 11 to 13 November is devoted to what Software Engineering needs, what should be changed, and how new and traditional institutions can adapt to the fast pace of … Read more
Once you have learned the benefits of formally expressing requirements, you keep noticing potential ambiguities and other deficiencies [1] in everyday language. Most such cases are only worth a passing smile, but here’s one that perhaps can serve to illustrate a point with business analysts in your next requirements engineering workshop or with students in your … Read more
The lecture schedule has now been posted for the 2019 LASER summer school on artificial intelligence, machine learning and software engineering. The speakers are Shai Ben-David (Waterloo), Lionel Briand (Luxembourg), Pascal Fua (EPFL), Erik Meijer (Facebook), Tim Menzies (NC State) and I. The last deadline for registration is May 20. The school takes place June … Read more