An overview of Mirjam and WeaveC

In this chapter, we elaborate on the design of an industrial-strength aspectoriented programming language and weaver for large-scale software development. First, we present an analysis on the requirements of a general purpose aspect-oriented language that can handle crosscutting concerns in ASML software. We also outline a strategy on working with aspects in large-scale software development processes. In our design, we both re-use existing aspect-oriented language abstractions and propose new ones to address the issues that we identified in our analysis. The quality of the code ensured by the realized language and weaver has a positive impact both on maintenance effort and lead-time in the first line software development process. As evidence, we present a short evaluation of the language and weaver as applied today in the software development process of ASML

Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research

Physics-related epistemic uncertainties in proton depth dose simulation

A set of physics models and parameters pertaining to the simulation of proton energy deposition in matter are evaluated in the energy range up to approximately 65 MeV, based on their implementations in the Geant4 toolkit. The analysis assesses several features of the models and the impact of their associated epistemic uncertainties, i.e. uncertainties due to lack of knowledge, on the simulation results. Possible systematic effects deriving from uncertainties of this kind are highlighted; their relevance in relation to the application environment and different experimental requirements are discussed, with emphasis on the simulation of radiotherapy set-ups. By documenting quantitatively the features of a wide set of simulation models and the related intrinsic uncertainties affecting the simulation results, this analysis provides guidance regarding the use of the concerned simulation tools in experimental applications; it also provides indications for further experimental measurements addressing the sources of such uncertainties.Comment: To be published in IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sc

An approach to reconcile the agile and CMMI contexts in product line development

Software product line approaches produce reusable platforms and architectures for products set developed by specific companies. These approaches are strategic in nature requiring coordination, discipline, commonality and communication. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) contains important guidelines for process improvement, and specifies "what" we must have into account to achieve the disciplined processes (among others things). On the other hand, the agile context is playing an increasingly important role in current software engineering practices, specifying "how" the software practices must be addressed to obtain agile processes. In this paper, we carry out a preliminary analysis for reconciling agility and maturity models in software product line domain, taking advantage of both.Postprint (published version

Search-based amorphous slicing

Amorphous slicing is an automated source code extraction technique with applications in many areas of software engineering, including comprehension, reuse, testing and reverse engineering. Algorithms for syntax-preserving slicing are well established, but amorphous slicing is harder because it requires arbitrary transformation; finding good general purpose amorphous slicing algorithms therefore remains as hard as general program transformation. In this paper we show how amorphous slices can be computed using search techniques. The paper presents results from a set of experiments designed to explore the application of genetic algorithms, hill climbing, random search and systematic search to a set of six subject programs. As a benchmark, the results are compared to those from an existing analytical algorithm for amorphous slicing, which was written specifically to perform well with the sorts of program under consideration. The results, while tentative at this stage, do give grounds for optimism. The search techniques proved able to reduce the size of the programs under consideration in all cases, sometimes equaling the performance of the specifically-tailored analytic algorithm. In one case, the search techniques performed better, highlighting a fault in the existing algorith