WebinarMaking Software: What Works & Why We Really Believe It

Twitter: #ASQBear

Hosts: Greg Wilson and Andy Oram

Editors of “Making Software”

Greg Wilson

Greg Wilson is the chief scientist on Software Carpentry,

an intensive introduction to fundamental computational

skills for scientists and engineers. He has worked over

the past 25 years in high-performance scientific

computing, data visualization, and computer security,

and has been on the editorial board of Doctor Dobb's

Journal and Computing in Science and Engineering. His

most recent books are Data Crunching (Pragmatic,

2005), Beautiful Code (O'Reilly, 2007), and Practical

Programming (Pragmatic, 2009). Greg received a Ph.D.

in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh.

Agenda

Introductions Making Software

– Surprising Truths and Myths Panel discussion Q+A

FAQ

Questions– You can submit questions at any time

– “Questions” feature in GoToWebinar Panel.

Twitter: Share the event live using #ASQBear

Replay will be available at SmartBear.com

Greg’s Suprises

SURPRISE 1There's a lot more empirical research out there on software development than most people realize (certainly more than *I* had realized).

SURPRISE 3I've always found it ironic that programmers build wonderful rich tools for other people (like CAD systems or WYSIWYG page layout editors), but insist on using things themselves that are only a small advance on the VT100 terminal.

SURPRISE 2A lot of it is immediately actionable. Ball and Nagappan's results showing that physical distance between developers doesn't matter nearly as much as their distance in the org chart, for example, or the data that Hassan and Herraiz summarize showing that all the fancy code metrics people have proposed are statistically no better than just counting lines of code.

Andy Oram

Andy Oram is an editor at the technical

publisher and information provider

O'Reilly Media, specializing currently in

open source, programming, and

software engineering. Andy, along with

Greg, is the editor of Making Software.

Andy’s Suprises

SURPRISE 1How good the software engineers recruited for the book were at writing.

SURPRISE 2The sensitivity of results to the programmers’ environments.

SURPRISE 3The sensitivity of results to learning effects on repeated experiments

Marian Petre

Marian Petre has been conducting empirical

studies of expert software developers and high-

performing software teams for over 20 years.

She’s studied software visualisation, graphical

and textual program representations, paradigms,

disciplines of innovation, and a host of other

topics. Marian is Prof. of Computing at the Open

University in the UK and a Royal Society

Wolfson Research Merit Award holder.

Marian’s Suprises

SURPRISE 1Experts don't program in programming languages or paradigms.

SURPRISE 2Pictures are only reliably worth 1000 words if they're accompanied by them.

SURPRISE 3Experts practice creativity - deliberately

Hakan Erdogmus

Based in Ottawa, Canada, Dr. Hakan

Erdogmus is an independent consultant,

researcher, and educator specialized in

software process. He is Editor in Chief of IEEE

Software, founder of Kalemun Research Inc.,

and adjunct professor of Computer Science at

the University of Calgary. Read about him at

thingssoftware.com.

Hakan’s Suprises

SURPRISE 1¬(Productivity 1/Quality)∝

SURPRISE 3Empirical results are interpreted differently by differently readers.

SURPRISE 2Understanding & variability of techniques differ widely.

Jason Cohen

Jason Cohen is the founder of the original

Smart Bear Software, makers of

CodeCollaborator, the most popular peer

code review tool. He’s the author of Best

Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review, and the

founder of three other companies including

WPEngine and ITWatchDogs. He blogs

regularly at ASmartBear.com.

Jason’s Surprise’s

SURPRISE 1Self-review works. 50% strength, but 50% less time too.

SURPRISE 3Checklists with 1-3 items are more effective than with 30.

SURPRISE 2Meetings don't uncover new bugs.

Diomidis Spinellis

Diomidis Spinellis is a Professor of Software

Engineering at the Athens University of

Economics and Business.  He has written the

two award-winning “Open Source Perspective”

books: Code Reading and Code Quality, and is

contributing the IEEE Software Tools of the

Trade column.  Diomidis is the developer of

UMLGraph and a four time winner of the

International Obfuscated C Code Contest.

Diomidi’s Suprises

SURPRISE 1Good abstractions carry you farther than planned.

SURPRISE 3Performance issues are not where you expect them.

SURPRISE 2Working on other peoples' code is easier than it appears.

Panel Discussion

JASON COHEN HAKAN ERDOGMUS

MARIAN PETREGREG WILSONANDY ORAM

DIOMIDIS SPINELLIS

Questions?

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