Going on-line on a shoestring: An experiment in concurrent development of requirements and architecture

A number of on-line applications were built for a small university using a micro-sized development team. Four ideas were tested during the project: the Twin Peaks development model, using fully functional prototypes in the requirements elicitation process, some core practices of Extreme Programming, and the use of open-source software in a production environment. Certain project management techniques and their application to a micro-sized development effort were also explored. These ideas and techniques proved effective in developing many significant Internet and networked applications in a short time and at very low cost

CodeSkelGen: a program skeleton generator

Existent computer programming training environments help users to learn programming by solving problems from scratch. Nevertheless, initiating the resolution of a program can be frustrating and demotivating if the student does not know where and how to start. Skeleton programming facilitates a top-down design approach, where a partially functional system with complete high level structures is available, so the student needs only to progressively complete or update the code to meet the requirements of the problem. This paper presents CodeSkelGen - a program skeleton generator. CodeSkelGen generates skeleton or buggy Java programs from a complete annotated program solution provided by the teacher. The annotations are formally described within an annotation type and processed by an annotation processor. This processor is responsible for a set of actions ranging from the creation of dummy methods to the exchange of operator types included in the source code. The generator tool will be included in a learning environment that aims to assist teachers in the creation of programming exercises and to help students in their resolution

CodeSkelGen - A Program Skeleton Generator

Existent computer programming training environments help users to learn programming by solving problems from scratch. Nevertheless, initiating the resolution of a program can be frustrating and demotivating if the student does not know where and how to start. Skeleton programming facilitates a top-down design approach, where a partially functional system with complete high-level structures is available, so the student needs only to progressively complete or update the code to meet the requirements of the problem. This paper presents CodeSkelGen - a program skeleton generator. CodeSkelGen generates skeleton or buggy Java programs from a complete annotated program solution provided by the teacher. The annotations are formally described within an annotation type and processed by an annotation processor. This processor is responsible for a set of actions ranging from the creation of dummy methods to the exchange of operator types included in the source code. The generator tool will be included in a learning environment that aims to assist teachers in the creation of programming exercises and to help students in their resolution

End-user development in social psychology research:Factors for adoption

Psychology researchers employ the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to capture thoughts and behaviours of participants within their everyday lives. Smartphone-based ESM apps are increasingly used in such research. However, the diversity of researchers' app requirements, coupled with cost and complexity of their implementation, has prompted end-user development (EUD) approaches. In addition, limited evaluation of such environments beyond lab-based usability studies precludes discovery of factors pertaining to real-world EUD adoption.We first describe the extension of Jeeves, our visual programming environment for ESM app creation, in which we implemented additional functional requirements, derived from a survey and analysis of previous work. We further describe interviews with psychology researchers to understand their practical considerations for employing this extended environment in their work practices. Results of our analysis are presented as factors pertaining to the adoption of EUD activities within and between communities of practice.Postprin

A model-based design flow for embedded vision applications on heterogeneous architectures

The ability to gather information from images is straightforward to human, and one of the principal input to understand external world. Computer vision (CV) is the process to extract such knowledge from the visual domain in an algorithmic fashion. The requested computational power to process these information is very high. Until recently, the only feasible way to meet non-functional requirements like performance was to develop custom hardware, which is costly, time-consuming and can not be reused in a general purpose. The recent introduction of low-power and low-cost heterogeneous embedded boards, in which CPUs are combine with heterogeneous accelerators like GPUs, DSPs and FPGAs, can combine the hardware efficiency needed for non-functional requirements with the flexibility of software development. Embedded vision is the term used to identify the application of the aforementioned CV algorithms applied in the embedded field, which usually requires to satisfy, other than functional requirements, also non-functional requirements such as real-time performance, power, and energy efficiency. Rapid prototyping, early algorithm parametrization, testing, and validation of complex embedded video applications for such heterogeneous architectures is a very challenging task. This thesis presents a comprehensive framework that: 1) Is based on a model-based paradigm. Differently from the standard approaches at the state of the art that require designers to manually model the algorithm in any programming language, the proposed approach allows for a rapid prototyping, algorithm validation and parametrization in a model-based design environment (i.e., Matlab/Simulink). The framework relies on a multi-level design and verification flow by which the high-level model is then semi-automatically refined towards the final automatic synthesis into the target hardware device. 2) Relies on a polyglot parallel programming model. The proposed model combines different programming languages and environments such as C/C++, OpenMP, PThreads, OpenVX, OpenCV, and CUDA to best exploit different levels of parallelism while guaranteeing a semi-automatic customization. 3) Optimizes the application performance and energy efficiency through a novel algorithm for the mapping and scheduling of the application 3 tasks on the heterogeneous computing elements of the device. Such an algorithm, called exclusive earliest finish time (XEFT), takes into consideration the possible multiple implementation of tasks for different computing elements (e.g., a task primitive for CPU and an equivalent parallel implementation for GPU). It introduces and takes advantage of the notion of exclusive overlap between primitives to improve the load balancing. This thesis is the result of three years of research activity, during which all the incremental steps made to compose the framework have been tested on real case studie

Programming support for time-sensitive adaptation in cyberphysical systems

Cyberphysical systems (CPS) integrate embedded sensors, actuators, and computing elements for controlling physical processes. Due to the intimate interactions with the surrounding environment, CPS software must continuously adapt to changing conditions. Enacting adaptation decisions is often subject to strict time requirements to ensure control stability, while CPS software must operate within the tight resource constraints that characterize CPS platforms. De- velopers are typically left without dedicated programming support to cope with these aspects. This results in either to neglect functional or timing issues that may potentially arise or to invest significant efforts to implement hand-crafted so- lutions. We provide programming constructs that allow de- velopers to simplify the specification of adaptive processing and to rely on well-defined time semantics. Our evaluation shows that using these constructs simplifies implementations while reducing developers’ effort, at the price of a modest memory and processing overhead

Supporting software maintenance with non-functional information

The paper highlights the role of non functional information (about efficiency, reliability and other software attributes) of software components in software maintenance, focusing in the component programming framework. Non functional information is encapsulated in modules bound to both definitions and implementations of software components and it is written as expressions in a classical programming language. It is shown with an example how this notation supports software maintenance, with the help of an algorithm which is able to select the best implementation of a software component in its context of use, meaning byPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Why not empower knowledge workers and lifelong learners to develop their own environments?

In industrial and educational practice, learning environments are designed and implemented by experts from many different fields, reaching from traditional software development and product management to pedagogy and didactics. Workplace and lifelong learning, however, implicate that learners are more self-motivated, capable, and self-confident in achieving their goals and, consequently, tempt to consider that certain development tasks can be shifted to end-users in order to facilitate a more flexible, open, and responsive learning environment. With respect to streams like end-user development and opportunistic design, this paper elaborates a methodology for user-driven environment design for action-based activities. Based on a former research approach named 'Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments'(MUPPLE) we demonstrate how workplace and lifelong learners can be empowered to develop their own environment for collaborating in learner networks and which prerequisites and support facilities are necessary for this methodology