SPEAKER :
Prof. Mehdi Jazayeri,
University of Lugano
Switzerland
Chaired by Dr Jarzabek, Stanislaw (
[email protected])
SYNOPSIS :
Software is critical to the working of our modern society. Software is
pervasive, it works, it is invisible, it just seems to run things well
and stay out of the way. This is not by accident. Over time, software
engineers have developed techniques for creating functioning software
that is efficient and dependable. Software is so smoothly woven into
our machines and services that despite its pervasiveness, most people
do not even realize its presence in the devices and services they use.
Software engineering is about understanding problems and implementing
solutions that will work now and forever, economically, reliably, and
efficiently. Software engineers have developed an approach and a way
of thinking to tackle problems and look for near-perfect solutions.
Unfortunately, this attitude does not make them popular with managers,
who would prefer a less perfect solution that is delivered on time and
at less cost. The approach does not make them popular with other
computer scientists (e.g. computational scientists) who just want to
get the software running and get the results out, never mind
guarantees of correctness or adaptability to future needs. Worse,
looking for perfection does not work well in the real world with lay
people. Most people are happy to leave things as they are as long as
they sort of work. They don't need software engineers to point out all
the existing or potential bugs that could be fixed to make processes
more efficient and general.
In this talk, I will discuss some fundamental principles of software
engineering that are crucial to producing good software. The
principles are more general and can help for all problem solving.
Unfortunately, applying them in contexts where the software
engineering culture is not understood can make you a pain the neck. I
hope the talk will be enlightening to non-software engineers and at
least entertaining for software engineers.
BIODATA:
Mehdi Jazayeri
[email protected] is professor of computer science
and founding dean of the Faculty of Informatics at the University of
Lugano since October 2004. Before that he was a professor and head of
the Distributed Systems Group at the Technical University of Vienna
(1994-2004).
He worked at several startup companies in Silicon Valley before
joining Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto for ten years
(1984-94). He began his career as an assistant professor at the
Computer Science Department of the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill (1975-1980). Mehdi Jazayeri is an IEEE Fellow and was
program co-chair of ICSE 2000 and program chair of ESEC-FSE 1997, the
two premier international software engineering conferences.
DATE :
April 23, 2010
TIME :
10:00am - 12:00pm
ORGANISER :
