Some problems of professional end user developers

By the term 'professional end user developers' we mean people such as research scientists who work in highly technical, knowledge-rich domains and who develop software in order to further their professional goals. In common with other end user developers, professional end user developers do not describe themselves as software engineers and have no formal training in software engineering. They differ from most other end user developers, however, in that learning programming languages rarely presents them with any problem. In this paper, drawing on data from field studies of different groups of professional end users, we examine the problems that such people face in meeting the demands of software development given the culture in which they work and their normal development practice. Understanding these problems is an essential prerequisite to developing tools, techniques etcetera to support professional end user development

Code Review For and By Scientists

We describe two pilot studies of code review by and for scientists. Our principal findings are that scientists are enthusiastic, but need to be shown code review in action, and that just-in-time review of small code changes is more likely to succeed than large-scale end-of-work reviews.Comment: 4 page

Some challenges facing scientific software developers: The case of molecular biology

It is apparent that the challenges facing scientific software developers are quite different from those facing their commercial counterparts. Among these differences are the challenges posed by the complex and uncertain nature of the science. There is also the fact that many scientists have experience of developing their own software, albeit in a very restricted setting, leading them to have unrealistic expectations about software development in a different setting. In this paper, we explore the challenges facing scientific software developers focusing especially on molecular biology. We claim that the nature and practice of molecular biology is quite different from that of the physical sciences and pose different problems to software developers. We do not claim that this paper is the last word on the topic but hope that it serves as the inspiration for further debate

Scientists and software engineers: A tale of two cultures

The two cultures of the title are those observed in my field studies: the culture of scientists (financial mathematicians, earth and planetary scientists, and molecular biologists) developing their own software, and the culture of software engineers developing scientific software. In this paper, I shall describe some problems arising when scientists and software engineers come together to develop scientific software and discuss how these problems may be ascribed to their two different cultures

Advanced Visual Systems Supporting Unwitting EUD

The ever increasing use of interactive software systems and the evolution of the World Wide Web into the so-called Web 2.0 determines the rise of new roles for users, who evolve from information consumers to information producers. The distinction between users and designers becomes fuzzy. Users are increasingly involved in the design and development of the tools they use, thus users and developers are not anymore two mutually exclusive groups of people. In this paper types of users that are between pure end users and software developers are analyzed. Some users take a very active role in shaping software tools to their needs, but they do it without being aware of programming, they are unwitting programmers who need appropriate development techniques and environments. A meta-design participatory approach for supporting unwitting end-user development through advanced visual systems is briefly discussed

Models of scientific software development

Over the past decade, I have performed several field studies with scientists developing software either on their own or together with software engineers. Based on these field study data, I identify a model of scientific software development as practiced in many scientific laboratories and communities. This model does not fit the standard software engineering models. For example, the tasks of requirement elicitation and software evaluation are not clearly delineated. Nevertheless, it appears to be successful within the context in which it is used. In the context in which scientists collaborate with software engineers, however, I describe problems which arose from the clash of this model with a traditional,phased software engineering model. Given these models, I discuss the issues which have to be addressed in order to determine the software techniques and tools which might best support scientific software development in different contexts

La integración continua aplicada en el desarrollo de software en el ámbito científico–técnico

El proceso de integración de componentes que se requiere en los proyectos no es una tarea simple. La integración de software es un problema complejo sobre todo en sistemas que involucran código desarrollado por diferentes personas, por esta razón es necesario contar con un entorno que garantice la adecuada integración de las partes de un proyecto y posibilite visualizar los resultados de la integración de una manera fácil y clara. En este marco la Integración Continua ofrece un esquema que permite realizar integraciones a medida que se lleva a cabo el desarrollo generando incrementos pequeños y mostrando los resultados obtenidos. En este sentido el presente trabajo plantea un modelo de referencia cuya finalidad es construir una solución open source que implementa la Integración Continua, y permite evaluar los beneficios que aporta al proceso de desarrollo de software científico–técnico.XI Workshop de Ingeniería de SoftwareRed de Universidades con Carreras de Informática (RedUNCI

La integración continua aplicada en el desarrollo de software en el ámbito científico–técnico

El proceso de integración de componentes que se requiere en los proyectos no es una tarea simple. La integración de software es un problema complejo sobre todo en sistemas que involucran código desarrollado por diferentes personas, por esta razón es necesario contar con un entorno que garantice la adecuada integración de las partes de un proyecto y posibilite visualizar los resultados de la integración de una manera fácil y clara. En este marco la Integración Continua ofrece un esquema que permite realizar integraciones a medida que se lleva a cabo el desarrollo generando incrementos pequeños y mostrando los resultados obtenidos. En este sentido el presente trabajo plantea un modelo de referencia cuya finalidad es construir una solución open source que implementa la Integración Continua, y permite evaluar los beneficios que aporta al proceso de desarrollo de software científico–técnico.XI Workshop de Ingeniería de SoftwareRed de Universidades con Carreras de Informática (RedUNCI