The laws of branching (part 2): Tichy and Joy

by






Recently I mentioned the first law of branching (see earlier article) to Walter Tichy, famed creator of RCS, the system that established modern configuration management. He replied with the following anecdote, which is worth reproducing in its entirety (in his own words): I started work on RCS in 1980, because I needed an alternative for … Read more




Another displaced business

by






Front-page notice in yesterday’s Tages Anzeiger (one of the principal Swiss newspapers): Dear Readers: From today the employment-ads section will no longer appear as a separate supplement, but directly as a section of the Tuesdays and Thursday paper. The reason is the ever smaller number of position offerings. It seems clear that what has decreased … Read more




Empirical answers to fundamental software engineering questions

by






This is a slightly reworked version of an article in the CACM blog, which also served as the introduction to a panel which I moderated at ESEC/FSE 2013 last week; the panelists were Harald Gall, Mark Harman, Giancarlo Succi (position paper only) and Tony Wasserman. For all the books on software engineering, and the articles, … Read more




Concurrency video

by






Our Concurrency Made Easy project, the result of an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant, is trying to solve the problem of making concurrent programming simple, reliable and effective. It has spurred related efforts, in particular the Roboscoop project applying concurrency to robotics software. Sebastian Nanz and other members of the CME project at ETH have just … Read more




Smaller, better textbook

by






A new version of my Touch of Class [1] programming textbook is available. It is not quite a new edition but more than just a new printing. All the typos that had been reported as of a few months ago have been corrected. The format is also significantly smaller. This change is more than a … Read more