Software assessment lecture at the University of Bern (2014)

On October 15, I gave a lecture at the University of Bern on software assessment. The lecture was split into three parts:

  • an introduction on why we need to pay serious attention to software assessment,
  • a Moose Jazz session showing multiple live case studies, and
  • a concluding session on why custom tools are essential in software engineering.

The most exciting part, at least for me, was the second one. Instead of offering recounts of case studies, I showed these cases live. The cases ranged from:

  • multiple queries on a Java system,
  • parsing and analyzing a proprietary scripting language,
  • spotting performance problems by analyzing log files,
  • reasoning about development issues by querying issue tracker, and
  • inspecting the file system.

All of these tools were developed using Moose and they were produced in a short amount of time.

On the one hand, it’s nice to be able to show solutions to real problems live using a mature tool produced mainly by researchers. On the other hand, the very fact that all of these problems were solved with one uniform set of mechanisms attest the fact that assessment is indeed a generic skill that once learnt can be utilized in many different contexts.

At the end, I remarked that assessment is not deemed an interesting enough subject of conversation to capture the attention of engineers even though it is the most expensive and pervasive activity in software development.

So, I asked the audience if they found the demos exciting. I did not ask about interesting, I asked if they were exciting. And they all said yes.

You see, assessment is exciting. It only takes us to look at it properly.

Posted by Tudor Girba at 26 October 2014, 8:50 pm with tags assessment, presentation, moose link
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