Second day at ICSE, and again a nice batch of paper presentations:
- Testing: John Rooksby & Co. presented an ethnographic study of testing in a small company. They pointed out how “rigour” in testing is constrained by dynamics of customer relationships, strategic decisions, and testing effort.
- Software Coordination: Jim Herbsleb listed the challenges and research areas for upcoming studies in global software engineering. Among the items in his list were assessing the impacts of requirements changes (who is affected, how should they be notified?), development environment issues (utility of being aware of others’ actions vs. each developer’s privacy), and defining an architecture/organization “fit”: “Can this organization (with its particular combination of geographic distribution, skills, and structure) produce software that conforms to this architecture?”.
- Code Mobility: As part of a retrospective on the winner of the Most Influential Paper Award from ICSE 1997, Antonio Carzaniga, Gian Pietro Picco, and Giovanni Vigna talked about the various ways of thinking about “mobile code” –code that is sent to be executed to a different party over a network–, and about the impact that these various alternatives (mobile agents, remote evaluation, and others) have had over the years.
There was also a very nice banquet where we were able to try (a) archery, (b) tomahawk axe throwing, (c) segway riding (it doesn’t feel as dorky as it looks), and (d) s’mores by the fire. Good stuff!
