cmsc 838p, spring 2006: schedule

Please review the reading list and the guide to reviewing and summarizing papers in 838P as needed.

Please email me your review or summary before class begins. Please put [838P] in the subject line. And if at all possible, please submit your work in PDF or HTML format.

Some additional tips for a successful review:

• Your review must stand alone as a coherent writeup. I should be able to understand it without reading the paper. If you make judgments about the work described in the paper, explain why those judgments hold.
• The review should be customized to the paper assigned; it should look different than a review for a different paper about the same project.
• If I assign a paper for you to read, chances are high that the contribution of the paper is more substantial than what can be conveyed in two sentences.
• Do not copy sentences from the paper that you don't understand and put them in your review. I would rather read your possibly imperfect interpretations.
• Don't be vague. If describing general functionality, offer a concrete example that convinces me that you understand what you're talking about.
• Grammar and spelling matter. Grammar can turn an A review into an A- review, and a B review into a B- review.
• A B review is one that is incomplete or suffers from problems mentioned above.
• If Motivation or Contribution is missing entirely, there's a strong chance that the review will get a C.

Date	Topic	Assignment (due before next class session)
January 26th	Quick tour of 838p and software engineering research	Read pages 1-34 of Secure Coding and summarize. Also read about the principles assigned individually to you and be prepared to explain them to the rest of the class.
January 31st	"Why bad code happens to good people (part I)"	Read No Silver Bullet and summarize.
February 2nd	"Why bad code happens to good people (part II)"	Read Boehm and Beck and review both.
February 7th	Software engineering processes (spiral model, agile methods)	No assignment
February 9th	Software specification, part I: visual formalisms	Read STATEMATE: A Working Environment for the Development of Complex Reactive Systems and review it.
February 14th	Software specification, part II: visual "informalisms" and tabular formalisms	Project proposal due on February 16th
February 16th and 21st	Software specification, part II: visual "informalisms" and tabular formalisms	Read A Micromodularity Mechanism and review (due Thursday, 23 February).
February 23rd	Software specification, part III: set-based formalisms	Complete the elevator specification assignment. For resources on SCR-style tables, see Chapter 6 in Software Fundamentals (available on reserve in the CS Library) and this overview. This assignment is due on Thursday, March 2nd. You can hand in a copy to me in class.
February 28th	No class (because I'm at a workshop)	No assignment.
March 2nd-9th	The Alloy Analyzer	Read Chapter 7 (a poorly-typeset version is here) and Chapter 10 of Software Fundamentals and review both (due March 14th).
March 14th	Parnas on Design, part I: Information hiding	Project progress report is due on March 28th.
March 16th	Parnas on Design, part II: Program families	Read Chapter 14 of Software Fundamentals and review (due March 28th).
March 28th	Parnas on Design, part III: Subsets	If your last name begins with A-K: read chapter 15 of Software Fundamentals and review. If your last name begins with L-Z: read chapter 16 of Software Fundamentals and review.
April 4th	Parnas on Design, part IV: More on information hiding	As a group (A-K or L-Z), prepare a 20-minute presentation on Chapter 15 or 16. You will present on Tuesday, April 4th.
April 6th	Aspect-oriented programming	Read Sections 1-4 of Kiczales-ECOOP97 and Sections 1-3 of Kiczales-ECOOP01. Write a 1-page paper that answers the questions "What is aspect-oriented programming?" and "What is AspectJ?".
April 11th	Aspect-oriented programming	Install Eclipse and AspectJ (AJDT) on your laptop. Download TerpCalc source code as well. Look at the forum for more details...
April 13th	Aspect-oriented programming	Read Ossher and Lieberherr and summarize.
April 18th-20th	Finish AOP	Read Aldrich and review. This review is due on Tuesday, April 25th.
April 25th-27th	Software Architecture
May 2nd-4th	Inferring specifications, architectures, or design decisions by analyzing code (static analysis) or analyzing traces from test executions (dynamic analysis). Adding annotations to code that explicitly provide info about requirements, architectural decisions, and design decisions.
May 9th-11th	Project presentations