Requirements for software engineering languages

This paper analyzes the concepts of software construction embodied in the Draco system. The analysis relates specific mechanisms in Draco to particular software engineering (SE) principles and suggests future research needed to extend the approach. The purpose of the analysis is to help researchers understand Draco better and thus be able to direct in productive directions future research on this type of software engineering tool

The relativistic attitude in development: reflections on the implementation of the Ethiopian multinational Constitution

L’approccio allo sviluppo che considera la crescita economica come unico obiettivo può produrre degli effetti deleteri sui gruppi marginalizzati. Lo sviluppismo adottato in Etiopia dal 1991 illustra questo punto con riferimento ai contadini, ai popoli pastorali e alle minoranze etniche. La riflessione internazionale sullo sviluppo e il progresso nel campo dei diritti umani hanno portato all’emergere di nuovi paradigmi. L’articolo mostra come le misure correttive siano state caratterizzate da una crescente attitudine ‘relativistica’, che consiste nel dare considerazione alla rilevanza di articolazioni particolari di cultura, norme formali o informali, e condizioni locali. L’attitudine relativistica è prima definita e poi considerata in relazione alla compatibilità con la Costituzione Etiopica, adottata nel 1995 ma mai messa realmente in pratica. La pressione del movimento Qeerroo sta inducendo la coalizione al potere ad aprire effettivamente alla democratizzazione del paese e alla decentralizzazione. C’è quindi una concreta possibilità di rivedere anche le politiche sviluppiste, in linea sia con la Costituzione sia con i diritti umani di seconda e terza generazione.Under the development approach that targets economic growth as its sole objective the marginalised groups may seriously be impacted. The developmental policy adopted since 1991 in Ethiopia illustrates it in relation to small-holding farmers, pastoralists and ethnic minorities. At the international level, alternative development paradigms have evolved along with progress in human rights. This article shows that the corrective measures have been informed by a growing ‘relativistic’ attitude, consisting in giving consideration to the relevance of specific articulations of culture, formal or informal norms and local conditions. The relativistic attitude is first defined and then considered in terms of compatibility with the Ethiopian multinational Constitution, adopted in 1995 but never really implemented. Under the pressure of the Qeerroo movement the ruling coalition in Ethiopia is today opening up to democracy and effective decentralisation. There is today a concrete possibility to revise the country’s developmental policy, in line with the Constitution and respecting second and third generation human rights

Predicting Software Fault Proneness Using Machine Learning

Context: Continuous Integration (CI) is a DevOps technique which is widely used in practice. Studies show that its adoption rates will increase even further. At the same time, it is argued that maintaining product quality requires extensive and time consuming, testing and code reviews. In this context, if not done properly, shorter sprint cycles and agile practices entail higher risk for the quality of the product. It has been reported in literature [68], that lack of proper test strategies, poor test quality and team dependencies are some of the major challenges encountered in continuous integration and deployment. Objective: The objective of this thesis, is to bridge the process discontinuity that exists between development teams and testing teams, due to continuous deployments and shorter sprint cycles, by providing a list of potentially buggy or high risk files, which can be used by testers to prioritize code inspection and testing, reducing thus the time between development and release. Approach: Out approach is based on a five step process. The first step is to select a set of systems, a set of code metrics, a set of repository metrics, and a set of machine learning techniques to consider for training and evaluation purposes. The second step is to devise appropriate client programs to extract and denote information obtained from GitHub repositories and source code analyzers. The third step is to use this information to train the models using the selected machine learning techniques. This step allowed to identify the best performing machine learning techniques out of the initially selected in the first step. The fourth step is to apply the models with a voting classifier (with equal weights) and provide answers to five research questions pertaining to the prediction capability and generality of the obtained fault proneness prediction framework. The fifth step is to select the best performing predictors and apply it to two systems written in a completely different language (C++) in order to evaluate the performance of the predictors in a new environment. Obtained Results: The obtained results indicate that a) The best models were the ones applied on the same system as the one trained on; b) The models trained using repository metrics outperformed the ones trained using code metrics; c) The models trained using code metrics were proven not adequate for predicting fault prone modules; d) The use of machine learning as a tool for building fault-proneness prediction models is promising, but still there is work to be done as the models show weak to moderate prediction capability. Conclusion: This thesis provides insights into how machine learning can be used to predict whether a source code file contains one or more faults that may contribute to a major system failure. The proposed approach is utilizing information extracted both from the system’s source code, such as code metrics, and from a series of DevOps tools, such as bug repositories, version control systems and, testing automation frameworks. The study involved five Java and five Python systems and indicated that machine learning techniques have potential towards building models for alerting developers about failure prone code

Specific "scientific" data structures, and their processing

Programming physicists use, as all programmers, arrays, lists, tuples, records, etc., and this requires some change in their thought patterns while converting their formulae into some code, since the "data structures" operated upon, while elaborating some theory and its consequences, are rather: power series and Pad\'e approximants, differential forms and other instances of differential algebras, functionals (for the variational calculus), trajectories (solutions of differential equations), Young diagrams and Feynman graphs, etc. Such data is often used in a [semi-]numerical setting, not necessarily "symbolic", appropriate for the computer algebra packages. Modules adapted to such data may be "just libraries", but often they become specific, embedded sub-languages, typically mapped into object-oriented frameworks, with overloaded mathematical operations. Here we present a functional approach to this philosophy. We show how the usage of Haskell datatypes and - fundamental for our tutorial - the application of lazy evaluation makes it possible to operate upon such data (in particular: the "infinite" sequences) in a natural and comfortable manner.Comment: In Proceedings DSL 2011, arXiv:1109.032

Налогообложение в реформах управления государственными финансами

Общепринятые теоретические подходы к реформированию государственной экономики, как правило, вполне пригодны для целей управления изменениями налоговых систем и их составляющих. В частности, в налоговом администрировании особенно проблемным представляется всемерное обеспечение реализации принципов горизонтальной справедливости, а также внедрение подходов, при которых для налогоплательщиков выполнение обязательств по внесению платежей становится более выгодным, чем уклонение от их уплаты. Во многих развивающихся странах неспособность правительства в связи с политическими причинами реализовать задекларированные программы часто является основным препятствием социально-экономического развития. Имплементация многих инициатив по реформированию не всегда успешна из-за отсутствия четких стратегий в государственной политике структурных изменений. Широко известны модели применения новых подходов в системах управления государственными финансами, в частности, при формировании и движении доходов, расходов и долгов. При стандартном анализе налоговых систем часто игнорируется результативность налогового администрирования, связанная с трансакционными издержками и влиянием теневой экономики: речь идет о затратах плательщиков обязательных платежей и сборов и налоговых органов, а также об иных, не подлежащих количественной оценке составляющих налогообложения, включая мотивацию нарушений законодательства. Большое значение имеет налоговое поведение, предотвращение оппортунизма, регулирование способов публичного раскрытия информации, применение системных инструментов взимания налогов. При разработке детальных планов реформирования необходимо стремиться к максимальной эффективности непрерывных циклов движения финансовых ресурсов в доходах и расходах, а также учитывать угрозы нарушения бюджетных процессов, при этом одним из главных должен быть вопрос выбора целей и приоритетов. Известны случаи, когда донорское сообщество и международные организации настаивали на необходимости внедрения определенных образцов «лучшей практики», особенно если реформирование осуществлялось при их финансовой поддержке. Отдавая должное многим позитивным примерам, следует иметь в виду, что для налоговой системы каждой страны характерны специфические черты, поэтому эффективность ее реформирования во многом будет зависеть от учета местных особенностей. В целом задача управления изменениями в системах государственных финансов усложняется внешними и внутренними факторами неопределенности, поэтому при любых обстоятельствах необходимо обеспечивать непрерывность бюджетного процесса и исполнение государством своих конституционных обязательств. Регуляторная функция экономики должна быть направлена на реализацию целей устойчивого экономического развития, соответственно, в рамках налоговой системы, как стратегического элемента госрегулирования, должны работать эффективные механизмы налогов, сборов, а также льгот и преференций во взаимосвязи с расходными статьями, трансфертами и субсидиями.Generally, standard theoretical approaches to reforming national economy are quite usable for goals of managing changes of taxation systems and their components. In particular, of most problematic issue for tax administration is all-round provision of implementing principles of horizontal justice, as well as introducing the approaches which allow the execution of commitments on making payments by taxpayers to be more profitable than evasion. In many developing countries, due to political reasons the government’s inability to implement their declared programs is frequently the main obstacle to improving the socio-economic progress. Implementation of many reform initiatives is not always successful due to absence of clear strategies in governmental policy of structural transformations. There are wide known models of applying new approaches in systems of public finance management (PFM), particularly, in regard of formation and dynamics of revenues, expenses, debts. The standard analysis of tax systems ignores, as a rule, the efficiency of tax administration connected with transaction costs and shadow economy influence: the issue is about the expenses, on one hand, for payers of obligatory payments and levies, and on the other hand, for taxation authorities, as well as about the other taxation components, non-subject to quantitative assessment, including motivation of breaching legislation. Of great significance is tax behavior, prevention of opportunism, regulation of not only tax rates and taxation basis but also of ways of public information accessibility, application of systemic toolkits of tax collection. While developing detailed plans of reforming, it is necessary to strain after maximum efficiency of continuous cycles of financial resource movements in terms of revenues and expenditures, as well as to consider challenges for interruption of the budget processes. At that, one of the main issue is, obviously, selection of targets and priorities. There are known cases, when the donor community and international organizations insist on “the best practices” introduction, especially if the reforming is carried out with their financial support. In justice to numerous positive examples, it should be borne in mind that each taxation system of every country is characterized by their specific traits, so the efficiency of its reforming will at large depend on considering local features. On the whole, the task of managing changes in the public finance systems is getting more complicated in the context of external and internal factors of uncertainty. Thus, in any circumstances it is vital to ensure continuity of the budget process, as well as execution by the state of its constitutional obligations. The regulatory potential of economy should be focused on implementing sustainable economic development goals. Accordingly, in the taxation system framework, as a strategic tool for governmental regulation, there must function efficient mechanisms of taxes and levies, as well as benefits and preferences in coordination with expenditure items, transfers and subsidies

Code Smells and Refactoring: A Tertiary Systematic Review of Challenges and Observations

In this paper, we present a tertiary systematic literature review of previous surveys, secondary systematic literature reviews, and systematic mappings. We identify the main observations (what we know) and challenges (what we do not know) on code smells and refactoring. We show that code smells and refactoring have a strong relationship with quality attributes, i.e., with understandability, maintainability, testability, complexity, functionality, and reusability. We argue that code smells and refactoring could be considered as the two faces of a same coin. Besides, we identify how refactoring affects quality attributes, more than code smells. We also discuss the implications of this work for practitioners, researchers, and instructors. We identify 13 open issues that could guide future research work. Thus, we want to highlight the gap between code smells and refactoring in the current state of software-engineering research. We wish that this work could help the software-engineering research community in collaborating on future work on code smells and refactoring

Call for Participatory Decision Making: Discussion Paper on World Bank-Civil Society Engagement

This paper explores the opportunities for more meaningful, empowering forms of participation in World Bank decision-making. First, it examines the challenges of improving public participation in the Bank's institutional governance, and in its operations at global, national, and local levels. Then, it proposes a set of principles and a framework for thinking about how to expand and deepen the opportunities for meaningful public participation in all stages of Bank decisionmaking. Finally, it uses the framework to propose a set of recommendations for improving Bank practice for consideration by the World Bank's management and Board

Object-Relational Impedance Mismatch: A Framework Based Approach

The term impedance mismatch was first used in 1984 to label problems that arise when a program uses a relational database for storage. For example, when transferring data from a relational database into a program any relational data structure is lost because a program operates at the row level. Consequently that data structure must somehow be reproduced when data is returned to a database. There are many such mismatches that cost time and effort to address. As new programming and database languages are introduced other kinds of impedance mismatch are anticipated. Traditional approaches are concerned with pragmatic solutions to specific problems of implementation. They do not address the underlying cause and offer little rationale for the claim to a "solution". The motivation for this dissertation is to understand the cause of these mismatches so it is then possible to address each of them in an appropriate way. Problem themes are introduced as a way to make sense of impedance mismatch. Such problems are not independent. Relationships between problem themes demonstrate the complex nature of impedance mismatch and they are used to identify three problems of particular significance. A structure to existing characterisations of impedance mismatch is identified and developed in order to organise the characterisations in a meaningful and useful way. This structure, based on four levels of abstraction, forms the foundation for a new framework. The framework recognises a separation of concerns between a program and a database across levels of abstraction. At each level is observed a particular kind of impedance mismatch. Through a dialogue about a correspondence at each level it is possible to understand and address each kind of mismatch in a structured and consistent way. A technique based on equivalence is introduced in support of a dialogue. The validity of the framework is demonstrated by identifying the cause of some significant mismatches. Across all the levels of the framework are explored both the cause of each mismatch and the effect of a solution. A four-stage process is described in support of an exploration and to inform others in the use of the framework. An option for change is linked to a conceptual problem not one of implementation and the fidelity and integrity of an existing solution is improved in a way that can be generalised for other solutions. New insights are also provided into the consequences of one solution. Understanding cause and effect in this level of detail is not available using an alternative framework described in the literature. However despite the improved understanding of an impedance mismatch and the consequences of a solution there is a limit to what can be achieved using the framework