Wednesday (9/23) 11:00
Shedding some Light on Merge Conflicts (Software Maintenance) – Leonardo Murta (UFF)

Leonardo Murta is an Assistant Professor at the Computing Institute of Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). He holds a Ph.D. (2006) and a M.S. (2002) degree in Systems Engineering and Computer Science from COPPE/UFRJ, and a B.S. (1999) degree in Informatics from IM/UFRJ. He has a PQ-2 research grant from CNPq since 2009 and a Young Scientist research grant from FAPERJ since 2012. He has published over 150 papers on journals and conferences and received an ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award at ASE 2006 and two best paper awards at SBES in 2009 and 2014, among other awards. He served in the program committee of ICSE 2014 and is the program chair of SBES 2015. His research area is software engineering, and his current research interests include configuration management, software evolution, software architecture, and provenance.

Abstract: Branches are frequently adopted to perform corrective and perfective maintenance in parallel, allow customizations, isolate critical changes, segregate novice developers, etc. However, these changes sooner or later need to be reintegrated through a merge process. Numerous merge techniques have been proposed over the years, but none of them can fully automate the merge process. In fact, it has been reported that some 10 to 20% of all automatic merge attempts fail due to merge conflicts, with peaks over 50% for some projects. To date, we have little insight into the nature of these merge conflicts. In this talk we briefly discuss how merge conflicts look like and how do developers choose to resolve them.

Wednesday (9/23) 14:30
Agile Software Visualization (Software Visualization) – Alexandre Bergel (University of Chile)

Alexandre Bergel is Assistant Professor and researcher at the University of Chile. Alexandre and his collaborators carry out research in software engineering and software quality, more specifically on code profiling, testing and data visualization. Alexandre has authored over 90 articles, published in international and peer reviewed scientific forums, including the most competitive conferences and journals in the field of software engineering. Alexandre has participated to over 85 program committees of international events. Alexandre has also a strong interest in applying his research results to industry. Several of his research prototypes have been turned into products and adopted by major companies in the semi-conductor industry and certification of critical software systems. Alexandre co-authored the book Deep Into Pharo.

Abstract: Software visualization is rooted into using cognitive abilities to improve software development. However, in practice, creating a software visualization is often considered as a singular and disconnected achievement. Dissociating a visualization from its primary goal, which is improving software engineering activities, may have severe consequences. For example, many software visualizations have a purpose limited to a general and informal “software comprehension”; visualizations are rarely empirically evaluated; visualizations remains infrequently adopted by the software industry.Agile Software Visualization is about fixing punctual software engineering problems by crafting visual software analyses in an incremental fashion. Immersing visualization within the iterative software development is key to unlock and associate cognitive visual abilities to address technical issues. This talk will demonstrate the necessary ingredients to make your visualization a super-hero of your development process and help you making software engineering decisions. Agile Visualization: http://agilevisualization.com Humane Assessment: http://www.humane-assessment.com

Wednesday (9/23) 16:30
Pasteur’s Quadrant: Bridging the Gap between Basic and Use-Inspired
Research in Software Engineering (Software Evolution) – Marco Tulio Valente (UFMG)

Marco Tulio Valente received his PhD degree in Computer Science from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (2002), where he is an associate professor in the Computer Science Department, since 2010. His research interests include software architecture and modularity, software maintenance and evolution, and software quality analysis. He is a “Researcher I-D” of the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq). He also holds a “Researcher from Minas Gerais State” scholarship, from FAPEMIG. Valente has co-authored more than 70 refereed papers in international conferences and journals. Currently, he heads the Applied Software Engineering Research Group (ASERG), at DCC/UFMG.

Abstract:Pasteur’s Quadrant is a classification proposed to describe research that is fundamental for the advancement of knowledge (basic research) but at the same time seeks for immediate solutions to real-world problems (use-inspired research). The name is a tribute to Louis Pasteur, whose scientific discoveries changed the way we view and prevent many diseases. In this talk, we first advocate that software engineering research should always target Pasteur’s Quadrant. Software engineering researchers should constantly look for hard, novel, and fundamental solutions (basic research) but that have an immediate contribution to software practitioners (use-inspired research). We then list some strategies that can help to deliver basic, but use-inspired scientific results. Finally, we share our experience on using these strategies in two recent projects from our research group, in the areas of software maintenance, evolution, and visualization.