Software Engineering in the Twenty-First Century Michael R
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Advancing Automatic Programming: Regeneration, Meta-Circularity, and Two-Sided Interfaces
SOFTNET 2019 Advancing Automatic Programming: Regeneration, Meta-circularity, and Two-Sided Interfaces HERWIGMANNAERT NOVEMBER 2 7 , 2 0 1 9 • Automatic Programming • Toward Automatic Regeneration • Creating Meta-Circular Regeneration • On Meta-Programming Interfaces ADVANCING AUTOMATIC PROGRAMMING • Concluding Facts and Thoughts Overview • Questions and Discussion • Automatic Programming • Concept and Trends • Remaining Challenges • Toward Automatic Regeneration ADVANCING AUTOMATIC PROGRAMMING • Creating Meta-Circular Regeneration • On Meta-Programming Interfaces Overview • Concluding Facts and Thoughts • Questions and Discussion Automatic Programming • Automatic programming: • The act of automatically generating source code from a model or template • Sometimes distinguished from code generation, as performed by a compiler • Has always been a euphemism for programming in a higher-level language than was then available to the programmer [David Parnas] • Also referred to a generative or meta-programming • To manufacture software components in an automated way • It is as old as programming itself: System.out.println(“Hello world.”); System.out.println(“System.out.println(\“Hello world.\”);”); The Need for Automatic Programming • Goal is and has always been to improve programmer productivity • In general, to manufacture software components in an automated way, in the same way as automation in the industrial revolution, would: • Increase programming productivity • Consolidate programming knowledge • Eliminate human programming errors • Such -
Retrocomputing As Preservation and Remix
Retrocomputing as Preservation and Remix Yuri Takhteyev Quinn DuPont University of Toronto University of Toronto [email protected] [email protected] Abstract This paper looks at the world of retrocomputing, a constellation of largely non-professional practices involving old computing technology. Retrocomputing includes many activities that can be seen as constituting “preservation.” At the same time, it is often transformative, producing assemblages that “remix” fragments from the past with newer elements or joining together historic components that were never combined before. While such “remix” may seem to undermine preservation, it allows for fragments of computing history to be reintegrated into a living, ongoing practice, contributing to preservation in a broader sense. The seemingly unorganized nature of retrocomputing assemblages also provides space for alternative “situated knowledges” and histories of computing, which can sometimes be quite sophisticated. Recognizing such alternative epistemologies paves the way for alternative approaches to preservation. Keywords: retrocomputing, software preservation, remix Recovering #popsource In late March of 2012 Jordan Mechner received a shipment from his father, a box full of old floppies. Among them was a 3.5 inch disk labelled: “Prince of Persia / Source Code (Apple) / ©1989 Jordan Mechner (Original).” Mechner’s announcement of this find on his blog the next day took the world of nerds by storm.1 Prince of Persia, a game that Mechner single-handedly developed in the late 1980s, revolutionized computer games when it came out due to its surprisingly realistic representation of human movement. After being ported to DOS and Apple’s Mac OS in the early 1990s the game sold 2 million copies (Pham, 2001). -
Turing's Influence on Programming — Book Extract from “The Dawn of Software Engineering: from Turing to Dijkstra”
Turing's Influence on Programming | Book extract from \The Dawn of Software Engineering: from Turing to Dijkstra" Edgar G. Daylight∗ Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands [email protected] Abstract Turing's involvement with computer building was popularized in the 1970s and later. Most notable are the books by Brian Randell (1973), Andrew Hodges (1983), and Martin Davis (2000). A central question is whether John von Neumann was influenced by Turing's 1936 paper when he helped build the EDVAC machine, even though he never cited Turing's work. This question remains unsettled up till this day. As remarked by Charles Petzold, one standard history barely mentions Turing, while the other, written by a logician, makes Turing a key player. Contrast these observations then with the fact that Turing's 1936 paper was cited and heavily discussed in 1959 among computer programmers. In 1966, the first Turing award was given to a programmer, not a computer builder, as were several subsequent Turing awards. An historical investigation of Turing's influence on computing, presented here, shows that Turing's 1936 notion of universality became increasingly relevant among programmers during the 1950s. The central thesis of this paper states that Turing's in- fluence was felt more in programming after his death than in computer building during the 1940s. 1 Introduction Many people today are led to believe that Turing is the father of the computer, the father of our digital society, as also the following praise for Martin Davis's bestseller The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing1 suggests: At last, a book about the origin of the computer that goes to the heart of the story: the human struggle for logic and truth. -
Model Based Software Development: Issues & Challenges
Model Based Software Development: Issues & Challenges N Md Jubair Basha 1, Salman Abdul Moiz 2 & Mohammed Rizwanullah 3 1&3 IT Department, Muffakham Jah College of Engineering & Technology, Hyderabad, India 2IT Department, MVSR Engineering College, Hyderabad, India E-mail : [email protected] 1, [email protected] 2, [email protected] 3 Abstract - One of the goals of software design is to model a system in such a way that it is easily understandable . Nowadays the tendency for software development is changing from manual coding to automatic code generation; it is becoming model-based. This is a response to the software crisis, in which the cost of hardware has decreased and conversely the cost of software development has increased sharply. The methodologies that allowed this change are model-based, thus relieving the human from detailed coding. Still there is a long way to achieve this goal, but work is being done worldwide to achieve this objective. This paper presents the drastic changes related to modeling and important challenging issues and techniques that recur in MBSD. Keywords - model based software; domain engineering; domain specificity; transformations. I. INTRODUCTION domain engineering and application. The system described by a model may or may not exist at the time Model is an abstraction of some aspect of a system. the model is created. Models are created to serve Model-based software and system design is based on the particular purposes, for example, to present a human end-to-end use of formal, composable and manipulable understandable description of some aspect of a system models in the product life-cycle. -
Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities
Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities Second Edition Nick Montfort The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2021 Nick Montfort The open access edition of this work was made possible by generous funding from the MIT Libraries. This work is subject to a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA license. Subject to such license, all rights are reserved. This book was set in ITC Stone Serif Std and ITC Stone Sans Std by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Montfort, Nick, author. Title: Exploratory programming for the arts and humanities / Nick Montfort. Description: Second edition. | Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities offers a course on programming without prerequisites. It covers both the essentials of computing and the main areas in which computing applies to the arts and humanities"—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019059151 | ISBN 9780262044608 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Computer programming. | Digital humanities. Classification: LCC QA76.6 .M664 2021 | DDC 005.1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059151 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 [Contents] [List of Figures] xv [Acknowledgments] xvii [1] Introduction 1 [1.1] 1 [1.2] Exploration versus Exploitation 4 [1.3] A Justification for Learning to Program? 6 [1.4] Creative Computing and Programming as Inquiry 7 [1.5] Programming Breakthroughs -
The Past, Present, and Future of Software Evolution
The Past, Present, and Future of Software Evolution Michael W. Godfrey Daniel M. German Software Architecture Group (SWAG) Software Engineering Group School of Computer Science Department of Computer Science University of Waterloo, CANADA University of Victoria, CANADA email: [email protected] email: [email protected] Abstract How does our system compare to that of our competitors? How easy would it be to port to MacOS? Are users still Change is an essential characteristic of software devel- angry about the spyware incident? As new features are de- opment, as software systems must respond to evolving re- vised and deployed, as new runtime platforms are envis- quirements, platforms, and other environmental pressures. aged, as new constraints on quality attributes are requested, In this paper, we discuss the concept of software evolu- so must software systems continually be adapted to their tion from several perspectives. We examine how it relates changing environment. to and differs from software maintenance. We discuss in- This paper explores the notion of software evolution. We sights about software evolution arising from Lehman’s laws start by comparing software evolution to the related idea of software evolution and the staged lifecycle model of Ben- of software maintenance and briefly explore the history of nett and Rajlich. We compare software evolution to other both terms. We discuss two well known research results of kinds of evolution, from science and social sciences, and we software evolution: Lehman’s laws of software evolution examine the forces that shape change. Finally, we discuss and the staged lifecycle model of Bennett and Rajlich. We the changing nature of software in general as it relates to also relate software evolution to biological evolution, and evolution, and we propose open challenges and future di- discuss their commonalities and differences. -
A Brief History of Software Engineering Niklaus Wirth ([email protected]) (25.2.2008)
1 A Brief History of Software Engineering Niklaus Wirth ([email protected]) (25.2.2008) Abstract We present a personal perspective of the Art of Programming. We start with its state around 1960 and follow its development to the present day. The term Software Engineering became known after a conference in 1968, when the difficulties and pitfalls of designing complex systems were frankly discussed. A search for solutions began. It concentrated on better methodologies and tools. The most prominent were programming languages reflecting the procedural, modular, and then object-oriented styles. Software engineering is intimately tied to their emergence and improvement. Also of significance were efforts of systematizing, even automating program documentation and testing. Ultimately, analytic verification and correctness proofs were supposed to replace testing. More recently, the rapid growth of computing power made it possible to apply computing to ever more complicated tasks. This trend dramatically increased the demands on software engineers. Programs and systems became complex and almost impossible to fully understand. The sinking cost and the abundance of computing resources inevitably reduced the care for good design. Quality seemed extravagant, a loser in the race for profit. But we should be concerned about the resulting deterioration in quality. Our limitations are no longer given by slow hardware, but by our own intellectual capability. From experience we know that most programs could be significantly improved, made more reliable, economical and comfortable to use. The 1960s and the Origin of Software Engineering It is unfortunate that people dealing with computers often have little interest in the history of their subject. -
E.W. Dijkstra Archive: on the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computing Science
On the cruelty of really teaching computing science Edsger W. Dijkstra. (EWD1036) http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1036.PDF The second part of this talk pursues some of the scientific and educational consequences of the assumption that computers represent a radical novelty. In order to give this assumption clear contents, we have to be much more precise as to what we mean in this context by the adjective "radical". We shall do so in the first part of this talk, in which we shall furthermore supply evidence in support of our assumption. The usual way in which we plan today for tomorrow is in yesterday’s vocabulary. We do so, because we try to get away with the concepts we are familiar with and that have acquired their meanings in our past experience. Of course, the words and the concepts don’t quite fit because our future differs from our past, but then we stretch them a little bit. Linguists are quite familiar with the phenomenon that the meanings of words evolve over time, but also know that this is a slow and gradual process. It is the most common way of trying to cope with novelty: by means of metaphors and analogies we try to link the new to the old, the novel to the familiar. Under sufficiently slow and gradual change, it works reasonably well; in the case of a sharp discontinuity, however, the method breaks down: though we may glorify it with the name "common sense", our past experience is no longer relevant, the analogies become too shallow, and the metaphors become more misleading than illuminating. -
The History of Computing in the History of Technology
The History of Computing in the History of Technology Michael S. Mahoney Program in History of Science Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (Annals of the History of Computing 10(1988), 113-125) After surveying the current state of the literature in the history of computing, this paper discusses some of the major issues addressed by recent work in the history of technology. It suggests aspects of the development of computing which are pertinent to those issues and hence for which that recent work could provide models of historical analysis. As a new scientific technology with unique features, computing in turn can provide new perspectives on the history of technology. Introduction record-keeping by a new industry of data processing. As a primary vehicle of Since World War II 'information' has emerged communication over both space and t ime, it as a fundamental scientific and technological has come to form the core of modern concept applied to phenomena ranging from information technolo gy. What the black holes to DNA, from the organization of English-speaking world refers to as "computer cells to the processes of human thought, and science" is known to the rest of western from the management of corporations to the Europe as informatique (or Informatik or allocation of global resources. In addition to informatica). Much of the concern over reshaping established disciplines, it has information as a commodity and as a natural stimulated the formation of a panoply of new resource derives from the computer and from subjects and areas of inquiry concerned with computer-based communications technolo gy. -
An Overview of Software Evolution
An Overview of Software Evolution CPRE 416-Software Evolution and Maintenance-Lecture 2 1 Software Evolution • What is it? • How important is it? • What to do about it? 2 An early history of software engineering • The following slides provide a condensation of the ideas of Robert L. Glass in his book "In the Beginning: Recollections of Software Pioneers" about the history of software engineering. 3 The Pioneering Era (1955-1965) • New computers were coming out every year or two. • Programmers did not have computers on their desks and had to go to the "machine room". • Jobs were run by signing up for machine time. Punch cards were used. • Computer hardware was application-specific. Scientific and business tasks needed different machines. 4 The Pioneering Era (1955-1965) • High-level languages like FORTRAN, COBOL, and ALGOL were developed. • No software companies were selling packaged software. • Academia did not yet teach the principles of computer science. 5 The Stabilizing Era (1965-1980) • Came the IBM 360. • This was the largest software project to date. • The 360 also combined scientific and business applications onto one machine. 6 The Stabilizing Era (1965-1980) • Programmers had to use the job control language (JCL) to tell OS what to do. • PL/I, introduced by IBM to merge all programming languages into one, failed. • The notion of timesharing emerged. • Software became a corporate asset and its value became huge. • Academic computing started in the late 60's. • Software engineering discipline did not yet exist. 7 The Stabilizing Era (1965-1980) • High-hype disciplines like Artificial Intelligence emerged.. • Structured Programming burst on the scene. -
Part I: Julia for Matlab Users
Julia Part I Julia for Matlab Users Prof. Matthew Roughan [email protected] http://www.maths.adelaide.edu.au/matthew.roughan/ UoA Oct 31, 2017 M.Roughan (UoA) Julia Part I Oct 31, 2017 1 / 33 I write to find out what I think about something. Neil Gaiman, The View From the Cheap Seats M.Roughan (UoA) Julia Part I Oct 31, 2017 2 / 33 Section 1 Get Started M.Roughan (UoA) Julia Part I Oct 31, 2017 3 / 33 The reason I feel like we can do this is because (I hope) you all know some Matlab, and Julia is syntactically and operationally very much like Matlab I syntax is very similar 1 I REPL is similar F tab completion, and up arrows work F ? = help F ; = shell escape to OS I JIT compiler I Use cases are similar 1REPL = Read-Evaluate-Print Loop; old-school name is the shell, or CLI. M.Roughan (UoA) Julia Part I Oct 31, 2017 4 / 33 So have a go You should have installed Julia before the workshop Start it up I start up varies depending on IDE, and OS I I am using simplest case (for me): the CLI, on a Mac I it’s all very Unix-y Type some calculations a = 3 b = a + 2 c = a + bˆ2 Create a script, e.g., “test.jl”, and “include” it include("test.jl") I its a little more cumbersome than Matlab M.Roughan (UoA) Julia Part I Oct 31, 2017 5 / 33 Section 2 Julia Isn’t Matlab (or Octave) M.Roughan (UoA) Julia Part I Oct 31, 2017 6 / 33 Julia may look a lot like Matlab but under the hood its very different and there are a lot of changes that affect you otherwise why would we bother? M.Roughan (UoA) Julia Part I Oct 31, 2017 7 / 33 Why Julia? Big -
Exploratory Data Science Using a Literate Programming Tool Mary Beth Kery1 Marissa Radensky2 Mahima Arya1 Bonnie E
The Story in the Notebook: Exploratory Data Science using a Literate Programming Tool Mary Beth Kery1 Marissa Radensky2 Mahima Arya1 Bonnie E. John3 Brad A. Myers1 1Human-Computer Interaction Institute 2Amherst College 3Bloomberg L. P. Carnegie Mellon University Amherst, MA New York City, NY Pittsburgh, PA [email protected] [email protected] mkery, mahimaa, bam @cs.cmu.edu ABSTRACT engineers, many of whom never receive formal training in Literate programming tools are used by millions of software engineering [30]. programmers today, and are intended to facilitate presenting data analyses in the form of a narrative. We interviewed 21 As even more technical novices engage with code and data data scientists to study coding behaviors in a literate manipulations, it is key to have end-user programming programming environment and how data scientists kept track tools that address barriers to doing effective data science. For of variants they explored. For participants who tried to keep instance, programming with data often requires heavy a detailed history of their experimentation, both informal and exploration with different ways to manipulate the data formal versioning attempts led to problems, such as reduced [14,23]. Currently even experts struggle to keep track of the notebook readability. During iteration, participants actively experimentation they do, leading to lost work, confusion curated their notebooks into narratives, although primarily over how a result was achieved, and difficulties effectively through cell structure rather than markdown explanations. ideating [11]. Literate programming has recently arisen as a Next, we surveyed 45 data scientists and asked them to promising direction to address some of these problems [17].