Computer Science Distinguished Lecture
| Date/Time: | Thursday, 06 Feb 2014 at 3:40 pm |
|---|---|
| Location: | 2245 Coover Hall |
| Cost: | Free |
| Phone: | 515-294-6516 |
| Channel: | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Categories: | Lectures |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
Abstract
Object-oriented (OO) refactorings have been known for over 20 years. Tools to perform common refactorings have been available for 15 years. The benefits of automating refactorings were documented in the late 1990s. Yet today, there is considerable evidence that refactoring tools are significantly under-used. Different studies have offered reasons, often pointing to overly complex user interfaces for refactoring tools. Writing customized refactorings is a task that is largely reserved to refactoring experts.
A critical part of undergraduate courses on software design includes refactorings and OO design patterns. Among the best ways to teach students about refactorings and patterns is to apply them to existing programs, but also have students write programs that sequence refactoring steps to mechanize orchestrated program changes, such as design patterns.
This talk presents a status report on a project to build a radically different refactoring engine whose primary goal is to allow undergraduate students to write classical and neo-classical refactorings (pull-up, class partitioning) and design patterns (visitor, framework) as parameterized refactoring scripts in Java. The inspiration for this work are frames of reference in Physics and Simonyi's Intentional Programming.
Bio
Don Batory holds the David Bruton Centennial Professorship in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. He received a B.S. (1975) and M.Sc. (1977) degrees from Case Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. (1980) from the University of Toronto. He was a faculty member at the University of Florida in 1981 before he joined the University of Texas in 1983. He was Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1999-2002), Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Database Systems (1986-1992), member of the ACM Software Systems Award Committee (1989-1993; Chair in 1992), Program Co-Chair for the 2002 Generative Programming and Component Engineering Conference. He is a pioneer of Feature Oriented Software Development (FOSD) and with colleagues (and former students) has recently authored a textbook on the topic. Since 1993, he and his students have written 11 Award Papers for their work in automated program development. He and Lance Tokuda were awarded the Automated Software Engineering 2013 Most Influential Paper Award on their work on program refactorings.