Your Grandfather’s Oldsmobile—NOT!

It was my privilege in the late 1990s to manage the DaimlerChrysler Research NA lab devoted to telematics—the study of Internet-ready, GPS-informed cars and trucks [1]. The past 15 years has witnessed the dawning age of self-driving cars —robotic vehicles on the open roadways. Continue reading Your Grandfather’s Oldsmobile—NOT!

A Popular Myth in Computer Science Education

Informatics educators expend more energy tackling education issues than educators in almost every other field. I believe much of this effort is unnecessary and could be eliminated if informatics educators could agree on a base set of computing principles. Continue reading A Popular Myth in Computer Science Education

The Fractal Software Hypothesis

Since the pioneering paper by Belady and Lehman in 1976 [1], software engineers have suspected that software development, and post-development called “evolution” is a complex process ending with a complex system—the software product. These early pioneers may have been the first to analyze program defects and note their statistical behavior. The idea that a software product is an evolving system with measurable statistical properties (like molecules in a gas or heat transfer in solids) has recently gained renewed interest with the introduction of agile methods, and the application of big data analytics to the software development process itself [2]. Continue reading The Fractal Software Hypothesis

Green Computing: What does the future hold?

Green computing is defined as “computing that does not harm the environment to the maximum possible level while not compromising the technological and commercial development of the computing field.” Greening is possible in all sorts of computing endeavors and green computing has an optimistic future with ample avenues for making it possible. Continue reading Green Computing: What does the future hold?