Stephanie Forrest believes in applying evolutionary biology principles to the software process creating evolvable software through automated bug repair, improving code and creating new combinations of existing functionality.
Karthik Dinakar presents the case of his team which attempted to be as agile as possible in order to fulfill the short-term goals but missed the long-term ones because some of the Agile best practices were ignored. He tells the story of how his team finally managed to come back on course and which are the practices that he considers as necessary for success.
Gerard Holzmann discusses Spin, a design analyzer tool, and Scrub, a code review tool, used by Jet Propulsion Laboratory to analyze and fix the software used for critical solar system exploration missions.
Robert Johnson discusses Facebook’s approach to scalability issues resulting from a large growth of the user base. He talks about: why one needs to prepare for horizontal and not vertical scalability, very short release cycles which are better because they introduce fewer bugs, the need to streamline to deploying process for short release cycles, and making the entire process faster every day.
Mary-Lynn discusses how Fearless Change presented patterns focused on the evangelist and the introduction of new change ideas into an organization. She goes on to note how the sequel, tentatively titled More Fearless Change, adds patterns that focus on gaining the necessary emotional and personal commitment to making change happen. She also talks about Agile and its adoption.
In this interview, Dr. Mercuri defines computer forensics, then discusses how forensics apply to criminal, civil, and intellectual property law. She addressed the challenges that technological advances, (e.g. RAID, cell phones, GPS devices, and Cloud Computing) increase the challenges faced by the forensic computer scientist. She also discusses appropriate actions if you suspect security issues.
In this phone interview that took place in front of an audience at OOPSLA 2008, Guy Steele spins a yarn with John McCarthy, the father of Lisp, attempting to find out some details surrounding the language inception in the 50’ and its later evolution.
