Experienced Software Developers Research Articles

Increasing the Reliability of Software Systems Using a Large-Language-Model-Based Solution for Onboarding

Software systems are often maintained by a group of experienced software developers in order to ensure that faults that may bring the system down are less likely. Large turnover in organizations such as CERN makes it important to think of ways of onboarding newcomers on a technical project rapidly. This paper focuses on optimizing the way that people get up-to-speed on the business logic and technologies used on the project by using a knowledge-imbued large language model that is enhanced using domain-specific knowledge from the group or team’s internal documentation. The novelty of this approach is the gathering of all of these different open-source methods for developing a chatbot and using it in an industrial use-case.

Real to Real: Deriving Software Development Practices from Film Production Principles

AbstractSoftware development projects face significant risks of going over budget, over schedule, and of failing to deliver expected benefits. These risks have endured despite methodological changes within the industry, such as the rise in popularity of Agile. This research looks outside of the software industry and seeks inspiration from film production, which has developed different management strategies to address challenges similar to those faced by software development projects.First, an analysis of film production project management reveals four principles, each evidenced by a set of practices used throughout the industry. Next, we identify sets of practices that would enable software development projects to also align to those same four principles. The synthesis of each principle from its set of supporting film production practices is then validated through structured interviews with veteran film producers. Lastly, the derivation of each principle to a parallel set of supporting practices within the context of software development is validated in a second series of interviews with experienced software development project managers.In total, this research identifies a set of software development project management practices that mirror film production practices. These practices offer a framework for software development project managers to consider when seeking to tailor existing methodologies, particularly in scenarios that present challenges similar to those encountered in film production.

Automated function development for emission control with deep reinforcement learning

The conventional automotive development process for embedded systems today is still time- and data-inefficient, and requires highly experienced software developers and calibration engineers. Consequently, it is cost-intensive and at the same time prone to sub-optimal solutions. Reinforcement Learning offers a promising approach to address these challenges. The evolved agents have proven their ability to master complex control tasks in a close-to-optimal manner without any human intervention, but the training procedures are hardly compatible with current development processes. As a result, Reinforcement Learning has rarely been used in powertrain development until now. This work describes an integration of Reinforcement Learning in the embedded system development process to automatically train and deploy agents in transient driving cycles. Using the example of exhaust gas re-circulation control for a Diesel engine, an agent is successfully trained in a fully virtualized environment, achieving emission reductions of up to 10% in comparison to a state-of-the-art controller. Further investigations are carried out to quantify the impact of the driving cycle and ambient conditions on the agent’s performance. To demonstrate the transferability between different levels of virtualization, the experienced agent is then tested in closed-loop with a real hardware controller to operate the physical actuator. By confirming the reproducibility of the learned strategy on real hardware, this article serves as proof-of-concept for a sustainable, Reinforcement Learning based path to automatically develop embedded controllers for complex control problems.

Recommender Model for Secure Software Engineering using Cosine Similarity Measures

One of the essential components of Recommender Systems in Software Engineering is a static analysis that is answerable for producing recommendations for users. There are different techniques for how static analysis is carried out in recommender systems. This paper drafts a technique for the creation of recommendations using Cosine Similarity. Evaluation of such a system is done by using precision, recall, and so-called Dice similarity coefficient. Ground truth evaluations consisted of using experienced software developers for testing the recommendations. Also, statistical T-test has been applied in comparing the means of the two evaluated approaches. These tests point out the significant difference between the two compared sets.

Opportunities and Problems Offered to Software Companies by the Pandemic Process

The pandemic process is an event that we have never encountered in our lives, and it still continues as a reality that we do not know exactly when it will end. In fact, this problem experienced by individuals is also valid for all businesses. The pandemic continues to affect all sectors. Software is also one of the sectors affected by the pandemic. Although this influence has positive aspects, it also has serious negative aspects. Especially in this process, online working, information security, video conferencing systems, online education etc. While many new job opportunities have been provided for the software industry with many applications, a very significant need for experienced and qualified software developers has emerged. Especially the need for experienced software developers who can work independently and develop software has reached its peak in this process. These developments are seen in many countries in the world as well as in Turkey. Currently, the positive and negative effects of the pandemic on the software industry are felt much more aggressively in developed countries. As a result of this, there have been very serious transfers of experienced software developers to developed countries, especially in recent years.

Development of FRIMAN – Supporting Tool for Object Oriented Programming Teaching

Abstract The main goal of this contribution is to present the current developmental state of FRIMAN – the graphical development environment designed to support the teaching process of the object-oriented paradigm. FRIMAN project has two main purposes: 1. simplifying the understanding of the basics of the object-oriented programming for JAVA language beginners, 2. teaching students of applied informatics to collaborate in bigger project development. Therefore, an application called FRIMAN has been developed at the Faculty of Management Science and Informatics at the University of Žilina. This project is developed by students of Master degrees under the leaderships of experienced software developers. The suggested system consists of several modules. In this paper, we focus on the description of selected modules and their current functionality as well as description of future plans for this project and brief description of FRIMAN development process. Attention is paid to a module for class management and a graphical code editor, which enables the creation of method bodies using flow diagrams without the necessity of programming language syntax knowledge. Based on good evaluation by the development team preparing changes in the high school education process, the current application is planned to be applied in practice.

Requirements engineering issues causing software development outsourcing failure.

Software development outsourcing is becoming more and more famous because of the advantages like cost abatement, process enhancement, and coping with the scarcity of needed resources. Studies confirm that unfortunately a large proportion of the software development outsourcing projects fails to realize anticipated benefits. Investigations into the failures of such projects divulge that in several cases software development outsourcing projects are failed because of the issues that are associated with requirements engineering process. The objective of this study is the identification and the ranking of the commonly occurring issues of the requirements engineering process in the case of software development outsourcing. For this purpose, contemporary literature has been assessed rigorously, issues faced by practitioners have been identified and three questionnaire surveys have been organized by involving experienced software development outsourcing practitioners. The Delphi technique, cut-off value method and 50% rule have also been employed. The study explores 150 issues (129 issues from literature and 21 from industry) of requirements engineering process for software development outsourcing, groups the 150 issues into 7 identified categories and then extricates 43 customarily or commonly arising issues from the 150 issues. Founded on 'frequency of occurrence' the 43 customarily arising issues have been ranked with respect to respective categories (category-wise ranking) and with respect to all the categories (overall ranking). Categories of the customarily arising issues have also been ranked. The issues' identification and ranking contribute to design proactive software project management plan for dealing with software development outsourcing failures and attaining conjectured benefits of the software development outsourcing.

Development metrics measurement level for component reusability evaluation approach (CREA)

The study of software component reuse is rising in software development field and one of the methods used to reduce the production cost and time. Among the problems faced by software developers in component reuse, is the difficulty to determine which set of components are suitable to use in new software development. Thus, this study was conducted with the purpose; to define the characteristics of software component reusability evaluation approach (CREA) based on experienced software developer’s feedback, and to estimate the measurement level for each of the predefined metric. Three characteristics and sub characteristics, namely understandability (documentation level and observality), adaptability (customizability), and portability (external dependency) were identified that have been used to develop the metrics for CREA. The result for all metrics will be used as an input to the fuzzy inference system (FIS) for measuring the reusability level of the component.

How Developers Diagnose Potential Security Vulnerabilities with a Static Analysis Tool

While using security tools to resolve security defects, software developers must apply considerable effort. Success depends on a developer's ability to interact with tools, ask the right questions, and make strategic decisions. To build better security tools and subsequently help developers resolve defects more accurately and efficiently, we studied the defect resolution process—from the questions developers ask to their strategies for answering them. In this paper, we report on an exploratory study with novice and experienced software developers. We equipped them with Find Security Bugs, a security-oriented static analysis tool, and observed their interactions with security vulnerabilities in an open-source system that they had previously contributed to. We found that they asked questions not only about security vulnerabilities, associated attacks, and fixes, but also questions about the software itself, the social ecosystem that built the software, and related resources and tools. We describe the strategic successes and failures we observed and how future tools can leverage our findings to encourage better strategies.

System Development Method Education through Regional Collaboration

In undergraduate education, it is difficult to teach the system development method at regular classes, because there is time constraint. Teachers can explain the type, features of software development method, and development process, etc. However, the lecture can only acquire knowledge. It is difficult for students who have not experienced software development to master the ability actual of system development. In order to solve this problem, we educated the system development method through examinations of citizen support system with collaboration with Nonoichi City and development of prototype system as extracurricular education. In this paper, we report its method and results.

BIMSL: A generic approach to the integration of building information models with real-time sensor data

Abstract The surge of interest in digital building models combined with increasing sensorization of spaces is prompting an integration of Building Information Modelling (BIM) with real-time sensor data. However, current approaches reported in literature either remain theoretical or target very specific application domains, showing that there is no generic approach to assist in the creation of service and application software that combines sensor data with BIM models. The solution presented in this article addresses the engineering complexity associated with integrating sensor data with BIM by leveraging an advanced software engineering technique known as a Domain-Specific Language (DSL). We demonstrate also that the language herein proposed, named Building Information Modeling Sensor Language(BIMSL) provides substantial gains of expressiveness and ease of use in developing queries that process sensor data with complex conditions over BIM models. BIMSL is validated with experienced software developers according to a consistent evaluation protocol for DSLs focused on effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, and usability attributes. The results outperform the standard existing alternatives, indicating that our proposal contributes to reducing the human effort associated with integrating BIM with sensor data.

A Framework for Improving Knowledge Management Practices in Namibian Software Companies

Software development (SD) companies employ, train and provide software developers with the platform to improve their skills. Unfortunately, these investments are lost when a software developer resigns from the company or is not physically available to carry out work activities. This is a major problem experienced in Namibian SD companies. This paper investigates how knowledge is transferred and retained by software developers in Namibian SD companies. Using a case study approach, five software developers were purposively selected from five software companies in the city of Windhoek, Namibia. Data were collected using structured interviews. The findings revealed that Namibian SD companies do not have a formal knowledge management (KM) strategy in place, management is not involved in KM practices and experienced software developers are not willing to participate in the KM process as a result of job insecurities. The findings also revealed that knowledge gaps are created in Namibian SD companies when an experienced software developer resigns from the company, and this consequently hampers the SD process. Based on the findings, the study therefore proposes a knowledge management framework (KMF) for Namibian SD companies, which incorporates the needs of each software developer as well as the needs of the SD company to create an effective KM for Namibian SD companies. The KMF for Namibian SD companies were presented to five experts in the field of Software Engineering. The experts validated the KMF for Namibian SD companies and found it useful within the context of Namibian SD companies. The KMF for Namibian SD companies is expected to improve the way KM processes are carried out in Namibian software companies, providing a realistic approach to improving KM practices.

A family of experiments to evaluate the understandability of TRiStar and i* for modeling teleo-reactive systems

The teleo-reactive approach facilitates reactive system development without losing sight of the system goals. ObjectiveTo introduce TRiStar as an extension of i* notation to specify teleo-reactive systems. To evaluate whether the notational extension is an improvement in terms of effectiveness and efficiency over the original language when it is used to specify teleo-reactive systems. MethodA family of experiments was carried out with final-year engineering students and experienced software development professionals in which the participants were asked to fill in a form designed to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of each of the languages. ResultsBoth the statistical results of the experiments, analyzed separately, and the meta-analysis of the experiments as a whole, allow us to conclude that TRiStar notation is more effective and efficient than i* as a requirements specification language for modeling teleo-reactive systems. ConclusionThe extensions made on i* have led to TRiStar definition, a more effective and efficient goal-oriented notation than the original i* language.

The effects of information sharing, collective efficacy and team conflict on system development team performance

Understanding the factors that determine information systems development (ISD) outcomes is an important step towards successfully deploying those systems. The ISD process is an information intensive and collaborative endeavour typically performed in teams. As a result, the process involves the sharing of information among multiple individuals. Previous research has demonstrated that information sharing has a direct positive effect on team performance. However, little is known about key mechanisms that underlie this relationship. The goal of this research is to understand direct and indirect effects of information sharing in the ISD context. Specifically, collective efficacy and conflict are theorised as intervening mechanisms in the information sharing and team performance relationship. Data were collected from experienced software development professionals. Information sharing was found to influence ISD team performance directly and indirectly via team conflict and collective efficacy. The results of the study provide important insight into effectively managing software development activities.

Development of a peer-to-peer information sharing system using ontologies

Most existing agent-oriented methodologies ignore system extensibility, interoperability and reusability issues. Ontologies have been found to play a significant role in facilitating interoperability, reusability, MAS development activities (including MAS analysis and agent knowledge modeling) and MAS run-time operation (including agent communication and reasoning). However, most of the existing AOSE methodologies do not provide support for ontology-based MAS development. We present software engineering requirements for ontology-based development for MAS and examine an existing methodology, MOBMAS – a “Methodology for Ontology-Based MASs”, which makes use of ontologies as a modeling tool. In this examination, we highlight how MOBMAS can be extended to utilizing ontology roles in facilitating interoperability, reusability and verification. This will be based on using MOBMAS to develop peer-to-peer (P2P) community-based information sharing application which lead us to identify ontology related steps that can be added to enhance MOBMAS. MOBMAS is used by two experienced software developers who were not authors of the methodology, to guide the development of the P2P application.

Withholding effort in knowledge contribution: The role of social exchange and social cognitive on project teams

Few investigations have been made to determine what factors influence people in withholding knowledge from their colleagues. We created a construct, knowledge withholding (KW), defined as the likelihood that individuals contribute less knowledge to others in the organization than they could. We have formulated a model, based on social exchange theory and social cognition theory, to analyze the antecedents of KW from both personal and contextual perspectives. The contextual influencers were subdivided into dimensions of rational choice, normative conformity, and affective bonding to help in understanding KW. Results of a survey of 162 MIS alumni of a university, who had experienced software development, trust, distributive justice, and team-related work showed that personal outcome expectations had a substantial influence on KW.

Adapting to change: Working with digital sound using open source software in a teaching and learning environment

This paper contributes towards knowledge and understanding of the creative use of software and hardware tools for computer music. It stems from a strategic need to continually rationalize the way money is spent within an academic department on Music IT, and an interest in the advantages of open source software for managing musical and collaborative projects. The authors discussed the most practical way of assessing the use of a completely open source software platform (Linux) and a specific distribution (Ubuntu-studio). It was considered appropriate that the composer-author (Adrian Moore, AM) try to write something in his style, using his knowledge of software, calling upon the more broadly experienced software developer (Dave Moore, DM) who has an interest in open source software. After a concerted effort in the studio, it is apparent that the Linux platform has much to offer, but remains limited in a number of areas of Music IT that are used extensively in academia, industry and at home. However, as a platform for teaching and learning computer music it is an ideal tool, though we conclude that some ‘introduction’ at the outset is required for those who are uninitiated to a Linux based system.

Broadcast digital asset management at Lifetime Television

The merging of IT and broadcast technology has been an ever-expanding phenomenon. This merge is particularly evident in the area of digital asset management (DAM). The author, an experienced software developer, describes his first foray into the arena of broadcast technology. Currently he is working on a new DAM system for long form and promo content. The current post-production process will be replaced with an automated tapeless environment supporting ingest, quality control, dubbing, transfer to the editing system, archive management and transfer to on-air systems. This paper describes the education of the author on broadcast technology and the unique needs and concerns of his post-production clients. The merging of IT and broadcast, and the contributions each brings to the success of the implementation of a DAM system is set against the backdrop of a project as it progresses from high-level analysis, vendor selection, system design, hardware implementation, software development, testing and detailed workflow analysis. The author presents a project in the midst of development, with the recurrent pattern of successes and setbacks.

Delphi Study of the Cognitive Skills of Experienced Software Developers

In the present paper, a qualitative research of the cognitive skills of experienced software developers is presented. The data for the research was gathered using the Delphi method. The re- spondents were 11 software developers who have worked at least five years after their graduation. Two questionnaire rounds were conducted. In the first round, the respondents mentioned altogether 32 different skills. In the second round, 10 of the respondents answered and evaluated the difficulty of these 32 skills (e.g., does the skill efficiently differentiate experts from novices). The results are divided into two categories: composition and Approximately 40% of the skills were classified into the category comprehension. For each skill, the evaluated degree of diffi- culty of the skill is presented. In the category comprehension, skills related to comprehension of a program or a problem as a whole were evaluated as the most difficult.

APPLICATION OF CLUSTERING TECHNIQUES TO SOFTWARE COMPONENT ARCHITECTURE DESIGN

This paper describes the application of two variants of clustering techniques to a matrix of requirements (use cases) vs. design units (classes), with the aim of augmenting the design of software component architectures. One algorithm used a modified COMO matrix-clustering algorithm, while the other is average-linkage agglomerative clustering based on similarity among classes as a measure of distance. Our results provide a shortcut for software engineers with limited experience in Component-Based Software Development (CBSD) who are constructing component architectures. This paper also evaluates the correlations between these two clustered results. We solicited feedback from experienced software developers who confirmed that the inferred hierarchies conformed to their conceptualizations of the software structure.