Towards a Theory of Software Development Expertise

Software development includes diverse tasks such as implementing new features, analyzing requirements, and fixing bugs. Being an expert in those tasks requires a certain set of skills, knowledge, and experience. Several studies investigated individual aspects of software development expertise, but what is missing is a comprehensive theory. We present a first conceptual theory of software development expertise that is grounded in data from a mixed-methods survey with 335 software developers and in literature on expertise and expert performance. Our theory currently focuses on programming, but already provides valuable insights for researchers, developers, and employers. The theory describes important properties of software development expertise and which factors foster or hinder its formation, including how developers' performance may decline over time. Moreover, our quantitative results show that developers' expertise self-assessments are context-dependent and that experience is not necessarily related to expertise.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 26th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2018), ACM, 201

Special Libraries, Summer 1994

Volume 85, Issue 3https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1994/1002/thumbnail.jp

Special Libraries, Summer 1994

Volume 85, Issue 3https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1994/1002/thumbnail.jp

Investigating Effective Inspection of Object-Oriented Code

Since the development of software inspection over twenty-five years ago it has become established as an effective means of detecting defects. Inspections were originally developed at a time when the procedural paradigm was dominant but, with the Object- Oriented (OO) paradigm growing in influence and use, there now exists a lack of guidance on how to apply inspections to OO systems. Object-oriented and procedural languages differ not only in their syntax but also in a number of more profound ways - the encapsulation of data and associated functionality, the common use of inheritance, and the concepts of polymorphism and dynamic binding. These factors influence the way that modules (classes) are created in OO systems, which in turn influences the way that OO systems are structured and execute. Failure to take this into account may hinder the application of inspections to OO code. This thesis shows that the way in which the objectoriented paradigm distributes related functionality can have a serious impact on code inspection and, to address this problem, it develops and empirically evaluates three code reading techniques

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

The relationship between search based software engineering and predictive modeling

Search Based Software Engineering (SBSE) is an approach to software engineering in which search based optimization algorithms are used to identify optimal or near optimal solutions and to yield insight. SBSE techniques can cater for multiple, possibly competing objectives and/or constraints and applications where the potential solution space is large and complex. This paper will provide a brief overview of SBSE, explaining some of the ways in which it has already been applied to construction of predictive models. There is a mutually beneficial relationship between predictive models and SBSE. The paper sets out eleven open problem areas for Search Based Predictive Modeling and describes how predictive models also have role to play in improving SBSE

Three Essays on Innovation and Regional Economic Development

The first essay develops a typology that identifies the multiple pathways, functions and operations where innovation can occur in a firm\u27s internal business cycle based upon the extant literature that includes both technological and non-technological activities. This is an important step toward developing a comprehensive strategy for a regional economy and provides a common platform for the discussion of innovation among academics and practitioners.The typology adds to the existing knowledge of how innovation works in organizations by describing the pathways, business functions and operations in a firm\u27s internal-business-process the business strategies used to advance innovation to the market and the market impact that innovation has in a regional economy.The typology is enhanced by the different threads of literature - innovation, technology, organization and marketing. The integrated approach allows academics and practitioners to understand how and where innovation occurs in firms and lays the foundation for robust metrics of the behavioral relationship between variables under study. The result is a set of assessment tools that permits diagnostics of the firm, industry, market and region. The second essay examines the relationship between innovation, emerging technologies, business firms\u27 investment structure, and specialized types of private equity used to finance emerging technologies. A conceptual framework is developed for financial investment and a set of hypotheses tested for investment between Ohio and U.S. firms. Ohio firms take a different investing approach than U.S. firms when investing in a firm\u27s stage of business development but are not significantly different when using specialized types of financing, investing in industry/technology niches, and investing in geographic markets.The third essay explores the role of innovation in business firms. The essay examines the reasons firms invest in innovation and then test the difference in the innovation behavior of firms. Descriptive analysis is per

Leaving the corporate fold: examining spin-off actions and performance

This research examines the exit of a subsidiary from its corporate parent through spin-off, the actions taken by the firm management post spin-off, and the performance implications of those actions, all from the spin-off's perspective. While spin-off announcements are generally met with a positive stock market reaction, what occurs post spin-off remains largely unexamined, with performance predictions regarding spin-off firms often being equivocal. This raises questions as to what generates positive performance for spin-off firms, with agency, transaction cost, and upper echelons theories offering differing, and sometimes conflicting, predictions. By integrating these theoretical perspectives, a model of managerial action and its performance implications is presented. The model examines how the formation of new top management, the establishment of managerial monitoring and incentives, and the severance effects from leaving the corporate structure affect strategic, financial, and institutional actions, and how these actions affect performance. The theory and hypotheses developed in this research are empirically tested on a sample of 176 corporate spin-offs completed by publicly traded firms between 1986 and 1997. Results for the action-based models indicate that background of the CEO or the TMT, as well as CEO options, had no effect on actions. CEO and TMT ownership had opposite effects on financial actions, with TMT ownership increasing the likelihood of strategic actions and CEO ownership increasing the likelihood of institutional actions. Ownership by the parent firm and monitoring by officers of the parent serving as board members had no effect on the likelihood of actions, although having a chairman of the board from the parent decreased the likelihood of strategic actions. Finally, severance effects had limited influence on the actions taken post spin-off. Results for the performance-based models indicate that strategic actions were negatively related to ROA, while financial and institutional actions are positively related to ROA and institutional actions are positively related to market performance. In general, inaction was related to lower Tobin's q, with the signs of the coefficients for the other performance models negative, but not significant. Finally, the spin-off firm's relationship with its corporate parent had limited effect on the link between actions and performance

A Mouse Model of Serotonin 1B Receptor Modulation of Cocaine and Methamphetamine Craving

abstract: Serotonin 1B receptors (5-HT1BRs) are a novel target for developing pharmacological therapies to reduce psychostimulant craving. 5-HT1BRs are expressed in the mesolimbic pathway projecting from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to the nucleus accumbens (NAc), which is involved in reward and motivation. 5-HT1BR agonists modulate both cocaine- and methamphetamine-seeking behaviors in rat models of psychostimulant craving. In this dissertation, I tested the central hypothesis that 5-HT1BRs regulate cocaine and methamphetamine stimulant and rewarding effects in mice. I injected mice daily with cocaine for 20 days and then tested them 20 days after their last injection. The results showed that the 5-HT1BR agonist CP94253 attenuated sensitization of cocaine-induced locomotion and cocaine-seeking behavior, measured as a decrease in the ability of a cocaine priming injection to reinstate extinguished cocaine-conditioned place preference (CPP). Subsequent experiments showed that CP94253 given prior to conditioning sessions had no effect on acquisition of methamphetamine-CPP, a measure of drug reward; however, CP94253 given prior to testing attenuated expression of methamphetamine-CPP, a measure of drug seeking. To examine brain regions and cell types involved in CP94253 attenuation of methamphetamine-seeking, I examined changes in the immediate early gene product, Fos, which is a marker of brain activity involving gene transcription changes. Mice expressing methamphetamine-CPP showed elevated Fos expression in the VTA and basolateral amygdala (BlA), and reduced Fos in the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA). In mice showing CP94253-induced attenuation of methamphetamine-CPP expression, Fos was increased in the VTA, NAc shell and core, and the dorsal medial caudate-putamen. CP94253 also reversed the methamphetamine-conditioned decrease in Fos expression in the CeA and the increase in the BlA. In drug-naïve, non-conditioned control mice, CP94253 only increased Fos in the CeA, suggesting that the increases observed in methamphetamine-conditioned mice were due to conditioning rather than an unconditioned effect of CP94253 on Fos expression. In conclusion, 5-HT1BR stimulation attenuates both cocaine and methamphetamine seeking in mice, and that the latter effect may involve normalizing activity in the amygdala and increasing activity in the mesolimbic pathway. These findings further support the potential efficacy of 5-HT1BR agonists as pharmacological interventions for psychostimulant craving in humans.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Neuroscience 201

The Effectiveness of <i>t</i>-Way Test Data Generation

Modern society is increasingly dependent on the correct functioning of software and increasingly so in areas that are considered safety related or safety critical. Therefore, there is an increasing need to be able to verify and validate that the software is in fact correct and will perform its intended function. Many approaches to this problem have been proposed; however, none seems likely to supplant the role of testing in the near future. If we accept that there is, and will be, a continuing need to be able to test software then the question becomes one of how can this be done effectively, both in terms of ability to detect errors and in terms of cost. One avenue of research that offers prospects of improving both of these aspects is the automatic generation of test data. There has recently been a large amount of work conducted in this area. One particularly promising direction has been the application of ideas from the field of experimental design and in particular, the field of t-way adequate factorial designs. The area however, is not without issues; there is evidence that the technique is capable of detecting errors but that evidence is not unequivocal. Moreover, as with almost all work in the area of automatic test generation, there has been very little comparative work comparing the technique with other test data generation techniques. Worse, there has been effectively no work done that compares any automatic test data generation technique with the effectiveness of tests generated by humans. Another major issue with the technique is the number of tests that applying the technique can result in. This implies that there is a need for an automated oracle if the technique is to be successfully applied. The flaw with this is of course that in most situations the oracle is the human that is conducting the tests, a point often ignored in testing research. The work presented here addresses both of these points. To do this I have used a code base taken from an industrial engine control system that has an existing set of high quality unit tests developed by hand. To complement this, several other techniques for automatically generating test data have been applied, namely random testing, random experimental designs and a technique for generating single factor experiments. To address the issue of being able to compare the error detection ability of all of the sets of test vectors, rather than the usual effectiveness surrogates of code coverage I have used mutation analysis on the code base to directly measure the ability of each set of test vectors to discover common coding errors. The results presented here show that test data generation techniques based on t-way factorial designs are at least as effective as handgenerated tests and superior to random testing and the factor experimental technique. The oracle problem associated with the factorial design techniques was addressed using a test set minimisation approach. The mutation tool monitored which vectors could “kill” which code mutants. After a subset of the test vectors had been run, the most effective vectors were retained and the rest discarded. Likewise, mutants that were killed were removed from further consideration and the process repeated. Experimental results show that this minimisation procedure is effective at reducing computational overhead and is capable of producing final sets of test vectors that are comparable in size with the sets of hand-generated tests and so amenable to final hand checking