Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and more
On how to build software, there is still much we do not know for sure; but we have also learned a few principles that can be considered firm. By definition these are not new ideas; today’s principle, for example, is related to what agile developers know as “timeboxing”. But even if they have been published … Read more
I am jealous of Emmanuel (Manu) Stapf who blogged about this before I had the time to; but I can at least refer you to his entry [1]. The idea actually comes from Martin Nordio, who as part of his thesis work formalized the exception semantics of both Eiffel and Java. In the process he … Read more
The next SEAFOOD (Software Engineering Advances For Offshore and Outsourced Development) conference will take place in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on 17 and 18 June 2010. The conference co-chairs are Andrey Terekhov from Saint Petersburg State University and Lanit-Tercom, and Martin Nordio from ETH are conference co-chairs. Mathai Joseph from Tata Consulting Services and I will … Read more
Airplanes today are incomparably safer than 20, 30, 50 years ago: 0.05 deaths per billion kilometers. That’s not by accident. Rather, it’s by accidents. What has turned air travel from a game of chance into one of the safest modes of traveling is the relentless study of crashes and other mishaps. In the US the … Read more
Many blogs including this one rely on the WordPress software. In previous states of the present page you may have noticed a small WordPress bug, which I find interesting. “Tags” are a nifty WordPress feature. When you post a message, you can specify one or more informative “tags”. The tags of all messages appear in the right sidebar, … Read more
In a few weeks I will be teaching again my Introductory Programming course at ETH, based for the first time on the published “Touch of Class” textbook [1]. For fun (mine if no one else’s) every lecture will conclude with a haiku summarizing the topic. I made up a few, given below, and am opening … Read more
Part of the experience of being a scientist, in the industrial age of publication, is the rejection letter; especially the damning review whose author, anonymous of course, does not appear particularly competent. I have my own treasured collection, which I will publish one day. For a fiction so artfully designed as to be almost as good as the real thing, … Read more