Category Archives: Software Engineering

Call for Papers: OSS 2011, the 7th International Conference on Open Source Systems

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  • Paper submission deadline: April 8, 2011
  • Conference location: Salvador, BA, Brazil
  • Conference dates: 6-7 October 2011
  • Conference website: OSS 2011

Conference Theme

Over the past decade, the Open Source Software (OSS) phenomenon has had a global impact on the way organisations and individuals create, distribute, acquire and use software and software-based services. OSS has challenged the conventional wisdom of the software engineering and software business communities, has been instrumental for educators and researchers, and has become an important aspect of e-government and information society initiatives. OSS is a complex phenomenon and requires a interdisciplinary understanding of its engineering, technical, economic, legal and socio-cultural dynamics.

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New German Edition of Design Patterns (Entwurfsmuster) book (in German)

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Seit ein paar Monaten ist die neue Ausgabe des Entwurfsmusterbuchs verfügbar. Dies ist meine Übersetzung des Klassikers “Design Patterns” von Erich Gamma et al. aus dem Amerikanischen. Mit der neuen Ausgabe kommen einige Neuerungen und Änderungen. An erster Stelle zu nennen wäre der neue Umschlag:

Erster Vorschlag für den Umschlag der neuen Ausgabe

Der tatsächliche Inhalt der Sprechblase in der endgültigen veröffentlichten Fassung ist ein anderer und lautet: “We present you the book that changed software design.” Da die Viererbande (Gang-of-four) noch auf ein Nachfolgebuch mit weiteren Mustern hofft, habe ich Addison-Wesley’s ursprünglichen Vorschlag entsprechend geändert.

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Curating, Preserving, and Showing Software at the Computer History Museum

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Last Saturday I visited the Computer History Museum’s new exhibition “R|Evolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing”. The exhibition is fantastic, and they’ve come a long way from the early days of their “visible storage” exhibition. If you live in or visit the Silicon Valley, I highly recommend you pay it a visit.

That said, every time I visit the museum, I ask about the state of curating, preserving, and showing not only hardware, but also software. Like most exhibitions, the R|Evolution exhibition focusses on physical objects and complements them with textual explanations on plates as well as videos. Software is being discussed in the Software Theatre and in some smaller videos. However, these videos are about software and programming in general, not about actual software artifacts. Software is mostly shown through physical objects, i.e. the boxes they came in as packaged software.

Packaged Software Box Arc

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Honoring Peter Naur on the Community Wall at the Computer History Museum

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Last Saturday I visited the “R|Evolution” exhibition at Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum (more on that later). One reason why I went there was to see the “community wall” of plaques sponsored by small-time donors. I had sponsored one and my saying on it was:

In honor of Peter Naur: To program is to learn.

I’m sure Peter Naur is being honored by the CHM elsewhere and in a more appropriate style than my whimsical plaque, but I wanted to use this blog post to explain the plaque and the meaning of the saying on it.

Like every non-profit, the CHM is always looking for support and donations, and so they had called for financial support in late 2009 and promised a plaque on a community wall as a way of saying thanks for the support.

Community wall (of small-time donors) at the CHM, Feb 2011

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Lessons Learned from Using Design Patterns in Industry Projects

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Abstract: Design patterns help in the creative act of designing, implementing, and documenting software systems. They have become an important part of the vocabulary of experienced software developers. This article reports about the author’s experiences and lessons learned with using and applying design patterns in industry projects. The article not only discusses how using patterns benefits the design of software systems, but also how firms can benefit further from developing a firm-specific design language and how firms can motivate and educate developers to learn and develop this shared language.

Keywords: Design pattern, pattern language, design language, design communication, design collaboration, design implementation, design documentation.

Reference: Dirk Riehle. “Lessons Learned from Using Design Patterns in Industry Projects.” In Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming II, LNCS 6510. Springer-Verlag, 2011. Page 1-15.

The paper is available as a PDF file.

Das AMOS Projektkonzept (2011)

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NACHHALTIGE PROJEKTE ZUM LERNEN UND AUSGRÜNDEN

Dieser Artikel stellt das AMOS Projektkonzept vor, welches ich in der Informatik-Lehre an der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg einsetze. Ziel des AMOS Projekts ist es, Studierenden professionelle Softwareentwicklung in einem konkreten Projekt zu vermitteln, welches idealerweise zu einer Startup durch die am Ende ihres Studiums befindlichen Studierenden führt.

Das AMOS Projekt ist für mich eine neue Erfindung: Ich habe es das erste Mal 2010 so abgehalten. Deswegen dient dieser Artikel nicht nur der Schilderung des Projektkonzepts, sondern sollte auch als Aufforderung zum Kommentieren gelesen werden. Ich vermute, dass es anderswo in ähnlicher Form betrieben wird und würde gern von den dortigen Erfahrungen lernen.

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Control Points and Steering Mechanisms in Open Source Software Projects

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Following up on my Lisog talk earlier this month, I was asked to write up the talk’s content. So here we go, my analysis of what commercial open source firms do to manage or steer open source projects they depend on.

Abstract: Most commercial software today depends on open source software. The commercial software might be using an underlying open source platform, or it might be incorporating open source components, or it might be provided as a commercial open source product itself. Whichever the case, the software firm behind the commercial software needs to ensure that its interests are met by the open source software projects it depends on. This article shows how commercial software firms manage or steer open source software projects to meet their business needs.

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Call for Papers: ICSE 2011

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ICSE is the premier software engineering conference. Next year, it will be held in Hawaii, so expect a full house! Below, please find the call for research and technical papers from the program co-chairs Harald Gall and Nenad Medvidovic.

Technical/Research Track

ICSE is the premier forum for researchers to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, results, experiences and concerns in the field of software engineering.

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Upcoming Talk (in German) July 2nd, 2010: Open Source: Was es ist, wie es funktioniert, warum es nachhaltig ist

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Speaker: Dirk Riehle

Abstract: Open Source bezeichnet nicht nur eine Kategorie von Software, sondern auch einen Ansatz der Softwareentwicklung, welcher sich von plan-getriebenen und agilen Methoden der Softwareentwicklung unterscheidet. Zunehmend betrachtet die Softwareindustrie zudem Open Source als Geschäftsmodell. Dieser Vortrag erläutert an zum Teil überraschenden Beispielen, wie die Open-Source-Softwareentwicklung funktioniert und wie sie sich von traditionellen Methoden der Softwareentwicklung unterscheidet. Über die konkreten Fragen der Softwaretechnik hinaus zeigt der Vortrag dann anhand von Geschäftsmodellen auf, warum Open Source wirtschaftlich nachhaltig ist.

Location: University of Dortmund, 13. Tag der Informatik, 2010-07-02, 14:30 Uhr, Invited Lecture.