"It Will Never Work in Theory" may have shut down, but I will continue to update https://third-bit.com/ideas/nwit/ with micro-summaries of empirical software engineering research papers that I find interesting. Note that I will mostly ignore LLM-oriented work for the foreseeable future: I'm sure gen AI is going to have a profound impact on our field, but right now, most of the papers I see on arxiv.org on AI+SE are basically, "We irradiated some data and we think it it may have glowed." #nwit
Someone asked me yesterday how my new job at Plotly was going (well, I think) and why I took it instead of retiring or going back to teaching full-time. Part of the answer is, "I still have a child to put through college," but the other part is that I hate leaving things half-done. 1/
Leotta et al 2023: "An empirical study to compare three web test automation approaches: NLP-based, programmable, and capture&replay" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smr.2606 The authors conclude that, "… NLP-based test automation appears to be competitive for small- to medium-sized test suites such as those considered in our empirical study. It minimizes the total cumulative cost (development and evolution) and does not require software testers with programming skills." #nwit
Kritikos & Stamelos 2023: "A resilience-based framework for assessing the evolution of open source software projects" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smr.2597 The authors adapt a city resilience framework from urban studies to assess the resilience of open source software projects. I don't know nearly enough to judge the results, but it's an interesting idea. #nwit
Grabinger et al 2023: "On the perception of graph layouts" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smr.2599 uses eye tracking to explore how programmers look at graphs (which in turn has implications for how we ought to lay them out) #nwit
For folks in Toronto: we just got a third piece of furniture from https://woodbench.ca/ - hand-made from reclaimed wood, solid, well-crafted and well-finished, and excellent service. ☆☆☆☆
@powersoffour@yabellini the problem I have with worldbuilding is the same problem I have with writing tools for books instead of books themselves: I could spend forever "getting ready" and never get around to what I was supposed to be supporting.