Software Engineering Radio

Recording Venue: University of Passau

Guest: Sven Apel

Host: Stefan

In this first episode on Feature-Oriented Software Development (FOSD), Sven Apel explains why developing software in a feature-oriented manner is so vital for us as software engineers and why objects are simply not enough.

Having stated that, Sven provides some clarifying answers to some key questions: What is a feature? What are feature models and feature modules? What is the infamous “feature interaction problem”?  And how come that we often struggle with the so-called “optional feature problem”?

Based on this common understanding, we then discuss the history of FOSD as a movement in software engineering research and a generative programming approach, its relationship to software product lines, and selected software landmarks (e.g. AHEAD). Finally, Sven sketches out the structure of an feature-oriented development process and comments on the relationship between FOSD and process management approaches such as Feature-Driven Design (FDD) and feature teams.

Links:

• Sven’s web site
• An overview article on FOSD
• The FOSD community portal

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Recording Venue: Skype

Guest: Bas Vodde

Host: Michael

In this episode Michael talks with Bas Vodde about how to apply agile principles to large and distributed development organizations. Bas shares his experiences on working in, consulting and coaching companies to adopt Scrum for large scale software development. Together Bas and Michael explore common problems and how organizations deal with these problems. Problems such as how to move to a feature-centric organization, how to get peoples buy-in in the transition or why to base large-scale development on Scrum.

Links:

• Odd-e
• Feature team primer
• Lean primer
• CppUTest page
• Book
• Practices book
• Craigs home page

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Recording Venue: QCon San Francisco 2009
Guest(s): Ramnivas Laddad

Host(s): Robert
This episode is a conversation with Ramnivas Laddad about aspect-oriented programming (AOP), Aspect J, and Spring AOP. We review the fundamental concepts of AOP, discuss AspectJ (an open source compiler that extends java with support for AOP), and cover the Spring Framework’s proxy-based AOP system. Laddad also gives his thoughts on the use cases for AOP and where we are in the technology adoption curve, and updates on the state of the AspectJ project itself.

Links:

• AspectJ in Action: Enterprise AOP with Spring Applications (2nd edition) by Ramnivas Laddad
• Episode 145: Spring in 2009 with Eberhard Wolff
• Episode 106: Introduction to AOP
• Episode 49: Dynamic Languages
• Episode 11: Gregor Kiczales
• Ramnivas Laddad’s web site
• Follow Ramnivas Laddad on Twitter
• AspectJ Development Tools
• Spring AOP Support Forum
• The AspectJ project
• AspectJ User Mailing Lists
• The Spring Framework

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