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Pages
Oscar Nierstrasz
About me
Posts
Teaching Moldable Development
Published:
Moldable Development is a way of developing software in which you build many, small custom tools to solve problems. This implies new tools and new associated skills. As with any new way of thinking, teaching can be challenging. In this session we go draw lessons from our experience of teaching Moldable Development in practice, including how it changes the teaching experience itself.
Mind the gap — 50 years of shortening feedback loops
Published:
On the occasion of the 50th BATbern event, it occurred to me that it has been roughly 50 years since I started programming. In that time I’ve seen quite a few advances in Software Engineering. I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on how these advances have not only shortened feedback loops in software development processes, but also how they have enabled new possibilities for innovation.
Ten Things I Hate About Object-Oriented Programming
Published:
Boy, I some days I really hate object-oriented programming.
portfolio
Portfolio item number 1
Short description of portfolio item number 1
Portfolio item number 2
Short description of portfolio item number 2
publications
Making Systems Explainable
Published in VISSOFT, 2022
In this keynote presentation, we will show how software systems can be made explainable with the help of three interacting technologies.
Recommended citation: Oscar Nierstrasz and Tudor Gîrba, Making Systems Explainable, VISSOFT 22: Proceedings of the 10th IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization, IEEE, 2022. https://www.oscar.nierstrasz.org/files/publications/Nier22a-ExplainableSystems.pdf
A decade of code comment quality assessment: A systematic literature review
Published in Journal of Systems and Software, 2023
We present a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of the last decade of research in SE.
Recommended citation: Pooja Rani and Arianna Blasi and Nataliia Stulova and Sebastiano Panichella and Alessandra Gorla and Oscar Nierstrasz, A decade of code comment quality assessment: A systematic literature review, Journal of Systems and Software, 195, January 2023. https://www.oscar.nierstrasz.org/files/publications/Rani22c-ADecadeOfCodeCommentQualityAssessment.pdf
EGAD: A moldable tool for GitHub Action analysis
Published in 14th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2023), 2023
We present our preliminary steps in building EGAD (Explorable GitHub Action Domain Model), a moldable domain-specific tool to depict and analyze detailed GA workflow data.
Recommended citation: Pablo Valenzuela-Toledo and Alexandre Bergel and Timo Kehrer and Oscar Nierstrasz, EGAD: A moldable tool for GitHub Action analysis, Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 23), 2023. https://scg.unibe.ch/archive/papers/Vale23a.pdf
Exploring GitHub Actions through EGAD: An Experience Report
Published in International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies (IWST 23), 2023
We present our experience developing and using EGAD (Explorable GitHub Action Domain Model) and share valuable insights we gained. Our focus is on three key areas: (i) onboarding of Glamorous Toolkit (GT), (ii) creating a comprehensive and explorable domain model of GA, and (iii) highlighting the potential of EGAD as a research workbench.
Recommended citation: Pablo Valenzuela-Toledo and Alexandre Bergel and Timo Kehrer and Oscar Nierstrasz, Exploring GitHub Actions through EGAD: An Experience Report, IWST 23: Proceedings of International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies, 2023. https://scg.unibe.ch/archive/papers/Vale23b.pdf
talks
The Death of Object-Oriented Programming
Published:
Invited talk at FASE-ETAPS 2016 (19th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering (FASE) — Eindhoven, The Netherlands, April 4-7, 2016)
Great Moments in the History of OOP
Published:
Invited talk at Simula 50 Years: “Great Moments in the History of OOP” (50 years anniversary of Simula, the first object-oriented programming language — Oslo, Norway, Sept. 27, 2017)
Taming your PhD
Published:
Presented at ASE 2020 Doctoral Symposium, Melbourne, Australia.
Making Systems Explainable
Published:
This was an invited Keynote presentation at VISSOFT 2022 (10th IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization), Limmasol, Cyprus.
Mind the gap — 50 years of shortening feedback loops
Published:
Invited talk at BATbern50 – Jubiläums-BAT 50, Paul-Klee Center, Bern, 14h30-19h00, June 9, 2023.
Embracing Software Variability to build Explainable Systems
Published:
Invited talk at VAMOS 24 (18th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems, Bern, Switzerland, Feb. 7 - 9, 2024) — “Embracing Software Variability to build Explainable Systems”
teaching
PEGs, Packrats and Parser Combinators
Guest lecture, University of Bern, 2023
This was a guest lecture held on April 6, 2023, and again on April 9, 2024 for the Masters course on Compiler Construction offered by Timo Kehrer at the University of Bern. The lecture provides an introduction to Parsing Expression Grammars, as a well as a live demo using the PetitParser framework to build an interpreter for a toy programming language.
A bit of Smalltalk
Guest lecture, University of Bern, 2023
This guest lecture for the Bachelors course, Programming 2 (introduction to object-oriented design) taught by Timo Kehrer, was given on May 20, 2022 at the University of Bern. (It is scheduled to be repeated on May 12, 2023.) The lecture consists of a live demo of the Smalltalk programming language in the Glamorous Toolkit environment. The lecture relies on a demo of the Ludo game which was the subject of students group work during the course. During the lecture we see two alternative implementations of the game and how their internal implementation is visualized and documented in the environment.