Keynotes
Keynote speakers
ASE 2012 will present interesting keynote speakers.
- Dr. Ivar Jacobson: ”Re-founding Software Engineering – SEMAT at the Age of Three”
- Prof. Mark Harman: “The GISMOE challenge: Constructing the Pareto Program Surface Using Genetic Programming to Find Better Programs”
Abstract
”Re-founding Software Engineering – SEMAT at the Age of Three”
Software engineering is gravely hampered by immature practices. Specific problems include: The prevalence of fads more typical of the fashion industry than an engineering discipline; a huge number of methods and method variants, with differences little understood and artificially magnified; the lack of credible experimental evaluation and validation; and the split between industry practice and academic research.
At the root of the problems we lack a sound, widely accepted theoretical basis. A prime example of such a basis is Maxwell’s equations in electrical engineering. It is difficult to fathom what electrical engineering would be today without those four concise equations. They are a great example to the statement “There is nothing so practical as a good theory”. In software engineering we have nothing similar, and there is widespread doubt whether it is needed. This talk will argue for the need of a basic theory in software engineering, a theory identifying its pure essence, its common ground or its kernel.
The Semat (Software Engineering Methods and Theory) community addresses this huge challenge. It supports a process to refound software engineering based on a kernel of widely-agreed elements, extensible for specific uses, addressing both technology and people issues. This kernel represents the essence of software engineering. This talk promises to make you see the light in the tunnel.
Biography
Dr. Ivar Jacobson is a father of components and component architecture, use cases, the Unified Modelling Language and the Rational Unified Process. He has contributed to modern business modelling and aspect-oriented software development.
However, all this is history. Lately he has been working on how to deal with methods and tools in a smart, superlight and agile way. He has developed a practice concept that is now being adopted by both developers and tool vendors. Now he is one of the leaders of a worldwide network Semat, which has agreed to revolutionize software development.
Dr. Jacobson is an international honorary advisor at Peking University, Beijing, and he holds an honorary doctorate degree from San Martin de Porres University, Peru.
He is the principal author of six influential and best-selling books.
Ivar Jacobson is the chairman of Ivar Jacobson International which has subsidiaries in the US, UK, China, Singapore, Sweden and Canada.
Abstract
“The GISMOE challenge: Constructing the Pareto Program Surface Using Genetic Programming to Find Better Programs”
Optimising programs for non-functional properties such as speed, size, throughput, power consumption and bandwidth can be demanding; pity the poor programmer who is asked to cater for them all at once! We set out an alternate vision for a new kind of software development environment inspired by recent results from the field of Search Based Software Engineering (SBSE). The proposed programming environment will automatically generate a set of candidate program implementations, all of which share functionality, but each which differ in their non-functional trade offs. The programmer navigates this diverse Pareto front of candidate implementations, gaining insight into the trade offs and selecting solutions for different platforms and environments. Rather than having to focus on the details required to manage complex, inter-related and conflicting, non functional trade offs, the programmer is thus freed to explore, to understand, to control and to decide rather than to construct.
This is joint work with Andrea Arcuri, John Clark, Bill Langdon, Yue Jia and David White.
Biography
Mark Harman is professor of Software Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at University College London, where he directs the CREST centre and is Head of Software Systems Engineering. He is known for work on source code analysis and testing and was instrumental in founding the field of Search Based Software Engineering (SBSE), on which this keynote builds. SBSE research has rapidly grown over the past five years and now includes over 1000 authors, from more than 300 institutions spread over more than 40 countries (as of July 2012). A recent tutorial paper on SBSE can be found here: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/mharman/laser.pdf