The evolution of the laws of software evolution. A discussion based on a systematic literature review

After more than 40 years of life, software evolution should be considered as a mature field. However, despite such a long history, many research questions still remain open, and controversial studies about the validity of the laws of software evolution are common. During the first part of these 40 years the laws themselves evolved to adapt to changes in both the research and the software industry environments. This process of adaption to new paradigms, standards, and practices stopped about 15 years ago, when the laws were revised for the last time. However, most controversial studies have been raised during this latter period. Based on a systematic and comprehensive literature review, in this paper we describe how and when the laws, and the software evolution field, evolved. We also address the current state of affairs about the validity of the laws, how they are perceived by the research community, and the developments and challenges that are likely to occur in the coming years

The Ticker, April 9, 1997

The Ticker is the student newspaper of Baruch College. It has been published continuously since 1932, when the Baruch College campus was the School of Business and Civic Administration of the City College of New York

University Reporter - Volume 13, Number 10 - Summer 2009

This issue of the University Reporter features, among others, articles about the appointment of Winston E. Langley as Provost, the 2009 Commencement ceremony (which included remarks from Senator John Kerry), Dominique Powell (the recipient of the 2009 John F. Kennedy Award for Academic Excellence), and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, as well as peices about academic and outreach programs at the University, including the Center of Math and Science in Context (COSMIC)

Towards an Ontology of Software

Software is permeating every aspect of our personal and social life. And yet, the cluster of concepts around the notion of software, such as the notions of a software product, software requirements, software specifications, are still poorly understood with no consensus on the horizon. For many, software is just code, something intangible best defined in contrast with hardware, but it is not particularly illuminating. This erroneous notion, software is just code, presents both in the ontology of software literature and in the software maintenance tools. This notion is obviously wrong because it doesn’t account for the fact that whenever someone fixes a bug, the code of a software system changes, but nobody believes that this is a different software system. Several researchers have attempted to understand the core nature of software and programs in terms of concepts such as code, copy, medium and execution. More recently, a proposal was made by Irmak to consider software as an abstract artifact, distinct from code, just because code may change while the software remains the same. We share many of his intuitions, as well as the methodology he adopts to motivate his conclusions, based on an analysis of the condition under which software maintains its identity despite change. However, he leaves the question of ‘what is the identity of software’ open, and we answer this question here. Trying to answer the question left open by Irmak, the main objective of this dissertation is to lay the foundations for an ontology of software, grounded on the foundational ontology DOLCE. This new ontology of software is intended to facilitate the communication within the community by reducing terminological ambiguities, and by resolving inconsistencies. If we had a better footing on answering the question ‘What is software?’, we'd be in a position to build better tools for maintaining and managing a software system throughout its lifetime. The research contents of the thesis consist of three results. Firstly, we dive into the ontological nature of software, recognizing it as an abstract information artifact. To support this proposal the first main contribution of the dissertation is demonstrated from three dimensions: (1) We distinguish software (non-physical object) from hardware (physical object), and demonstrate the idea that the rapid changing speed of software is supported by the easy changeability of its medium hardware; (2) Furthermore, we discuss about the artifactual nature of software, addressing the erroneous notion, software is just code, presents both in the ontology of software literature and in the software maintenance tools; (3)At last, we recognize software as an information artifact, and this approach ensures that software inherits all the properties of an information artifact, and the study and research could be directly reused for software then. Secondly, we propose an ontology founded on the concepts adopted from Requirements Engineering (RE), such as the notions of World and Machine phenomena. In this ontology, we make a sharp distinction between different kinds of software artifacts (software program, software system, and software product), and describe the ways they are inter-connected in the context of a software engineering process. Additionally, we study software from a Social Perspective, explaining the concepts of licensable software product and licensed software product. Also, we discuss about the possibility to adopt our ontology of software in software configuration management systems to provide a better understanding and control of software changes. Thirdly, we note the important role played by assumptions in getting software to fulfill its requirements. The requirements for most software systems -- the intended states-of-affairs these systems are supposed to bring about -- concern their operational environment, usually a social world. But these systems don’t have any direct means to change that environment in order to bring about the intended states-of-affairs. In what sense then can we say that such systems fulfill their requirements? One of the main contributions of this dissertation is to account for this paradox. We do so by proposing a preliminary ontology of assumptions that are implicitly used in software engineering practice to establish that a system specification S fulfills its requirements R given a set of assumptions A, and our proposal is illustrated with a meeting scheduling example

The Ticker, March 30, 2015

The Ticker is the student newspaper of Baruch College. It has been published continuously since 1932, when the Baruch College campus was the School of Business and Civic Administration of the City College of New York

The BG News January 25, 1983

The BGSU campus student newspaper January 25, 1983.https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/bg-news/5085/thumbnail.jp

Exploring Software Testing Strategies Used on Software Applications in the Government

Developing a defect-free software application is a challenging task. Despite many years of experience, the intense development of reliable software remains a challenge. For this reason, software defects identified at the end of the testing phase are more expensive than those detected sooner. The purpose of this multiple case study is to explore the testing strategies software developers use to ensure the reliability of software applications in the government contracting industry. The target population consisted of software developers from 3 government contracting organizations located along the East Coast region of the United States. Lehman’s laws of software evolution was the conceptual framework. The data collection process included semistructured interviews with software developers (n = 10), including a review of organizational documents (n = 77). Thematic analysis was used to identify patterns and codes from the interviews. Member checking activities were triangulated with organizational documents to produce 4 major themes: (a) communication and collaboration with all stakeholders, (b) development of well-defined requirements, (c) focus on thorough documentation, and (d) focus on automation testing. The results of this study may contribute to information about testing strategies that may help organizations improve or enhance their testing practices. The results of this study may serve as a foundation for positive social change by potentially improving citizens’ experience with government software applications as a result of potential improvement in software testing practice