User:Emirielli
Ed Mirielli
I am Chair and Professor of the Computer Science and Information Technology Department at Westminster College in Fulton, MO. Fulton is located about 90 miles south-west of St. Louis and about 30 miles east of Columbia, MO. Westminster College is a 4-year, primarily residential liberal arts college with around 1100 students. Currently our CS and IT program has about 50 majors - and growing.
My research and scholarly interests include software engineering, HCI, AI and machine learning, applied statistics, and pedagogy. I am a big believer in interdisciplinary scholarship and have worked collaboratively in epidemiology and demography, computational sociology, computer science, information technology, and psychology. I am currently working with a chemistry department colleague on bringing back to life our chemistry instrument laboratory and establishing a data collection repository for chemical analytics.
When I'm not teaching, learning, and performing administrative tasks, I like to cook and eat BBQ and play golf. These activities can be so relaxing.
Part 1 – Walk through of IRC Conversation
- How do people interact? People are interacting in a soft, semi-formal fashion. There seems to be a specific purpose for this interaction and chat-meeting. The interaction seems to embrace inclusivity by encouraging questions and interaction among the participants.
- What is the pattern of communication? The pattern of communication is alternating between questions, answers, and proposing and reconciling issues or problems. There is a management of the communication by the moderator who interjects summary statements indexed by keywords to capture the salient qualities of the interactions and to establish action steps for further exploration or outcomes.
- Are there any terms that seem to have special meaning? The use of keywords in the form of syntax specific notations (e.g. #info, #action, #topic, etc.) for the chat allow, as stated above, categorization of content and particular thread elements to be organized for later use and summarization.
- Can you make any other observations? There's not a large number of participants - 6 not counting the BOT for this chat session, I guess that will vary from project to project, although I can see how managing this could get hard to follow with LOTS of participants. However, with the moderation and management of content using the IRC commands, the resulting summary report provides a nice way to know what the outcomes of the meeting are and who is responsible. Some participants are asking more questions than others; the questions are being answered or strategies proposed to consider for solving an issue. Problem solving is being attempted and potentially achieved in near real time for some things. I think that this system of communication facilitates quick access to knowledge and problem solving specific to a project's context.
Part 3 Followed GNOME Accessibility Team with little traffic.
== Part B: ==
B1. FOSS Field Trip:
*Use the Search feature in the center of the screen to view applications in an area of interest to you (e.g., gaming, sports, music, computing, etc.).
>>Searched for data mining
*How many projects are there in this category?
>>Really cannot determine definitively since there's seems to be no single authorities summary statistic available. I added up individual items from the refine searches selection for estimate my Best guess = 929pages * 25per page = 23225 projects in this search category... however, "Data Mining" with quotes = 11pages * 25 = 257 projects.
*How many different programming languages are used to write software in this category? >>Data Mining = 15, that that seems common for most projects. "Data Mining" = 12
*List the top four programming languages used to write programs in this category.
Data Mining JAVA (5575) C++ (3035) PHP (2421) C (2288) "Data Mining" JAVA (93) C++ (35) PHP (16) C (13)
*Identify the meaning of each of the statuses below:
Inactive - project seems as though is not currently being worked on or it has been a while last update > year...
Mature - project activity hard to determine especially when there's no content other than a URL to another website, many of the projects in this category have much of the same characteristics as some of the inactive projects.
Production/Stable - at least 1 production release is available for download
Beta - a beta release has been made available for download
Alpha - an alpha release may be available for download
Pre-Alpha - project is new, so little ready for an alpha release yet
Planning - still in planning stages and seeking assistance, little or nothing ready to download and use
*Compare two projects in this category that have two different statuses. Describe the differences between the statuses.
I am comparing 2 project identified from the "Data Mining" (with quotes) search - 1 = Production/Stable and 1 = Mature. My selection criteria for the project is based on the top project appearing after selecting the "Sort By" = Most Popular. I have excluded any projects from the list that are designated "Enterprise" as this seems to confound that search results.
Mature (N=6 excluded=1)
Project Title: RapidAnalytics - Business Analytics
Downloads (this week) = 61
Last Update = 8/9/2013 User Ratings = 15 - 5 star ratings (each rating sub-class is 0/5) Indented Audience = Advanced End Users, Developers Programming Language = JSP, Java Registered = 7/10/2014
Languages = English, German User Interfaces = Web-based
File Download list - only 1 single entry last modified = 3/22/2013
Support = URL redirect
Wiki = NONE
Code = NONE
News = NONE
Production/Stable (N=34 excluded=1)
Project Title: Weka
Downloads (this week) = 15378 Last Update = 2 days ago User Ratings = 49 5 start ratings (ease of use 4/5, Features 5/5, Design 4/5, Support 4/5) Indented Audience = Developers, End-user/Desktop Programming Language = JAVA Registered = 4/27/2000
Extensive File Download list - last modified = 10/31/2014
Support = redirect to other URL
Wiki = general description identifies purpose, provides screen shots
Code = RO no (more) commits
News = last 2 posts 8/15/2013 and 7/6/2011 - EACH seems a bit out of data with the rest of the site's data.
Conclusion: The Production/Stable project is more active with interest and content. There is seemingly more activity from both the user and developer community as compared to the Mature project. The mature project is designated as "mature" only in the sense that it has been around for an extended time, although it is not very active.
*Which projects are the most used? How do you know?
Initially, since I was unable to find an operational definition of the project status ratings, I thought that Mature project would be more used, but my initial comparison demonstrates that Production/Stable projects are most used by the development and user community. This is based on the download and update frequency. Clearly the status rating is a NOMINAL designation since the numerical index (1-7) do not imply anything with regard to any significant empirical or quantities differences between projects.
*Pick a project in your category. Answer the questions below:
1. What does it do? provides a machine learning tool for advanced analytics.
2. What programming language is the project written in? JAVA
3. Who is likely to use the project? How do you know this? Analysts, desktop users
4. When was the most recent change made to the project? 10/31/2014
5. How active is the project? How can you tell? It is very active with 15378 this past week and the last update being 2-days ago
6. How many committers does the project have? There is no Committer data available for this project.
7. Would you use the project? Why or why not? Would you use the project? Why or why not? Just based on knowledge of this project's purpose and reputation I would use it for USER activities and consider participation as a developer. However, since it seems that SourceForge is not the main site on which development is taking place, this is yet to be determined.
Part 2 - Ohloh
- What is the main programming language used in Mifos? JAVA
- How many lines of code does Mifos have? 2,673,467
- List some of the locations of the developers. >> These data Will not display in IE or Chrome...
- How many languages is Mifos written in? 19
- What language has the second highest number of lines of code? XML
- Of the programming languages used in Mifos, which language the has the highest comment ratio? Perl
- What is the average number of contributors in the last 12 months? < 2
- How long have the top three contributors been involved in the project? >> Getting gateway error...
- Compute the 12-month average of commits. What is the average number of commits over the past 12 months?. 30 commits/12 = 2.5
Project Evaluation Activity
B3 - Blogging Activity
B4 - FOSS in Course Planning 1
We have a significant curricular investment in matriculating students towards a comprehensive software engineering experience. And it is from the perspective of "experiences" and not "courses" that focuses my attention. Much of the provided content and activities for FOSS engagement are highly relevant to contributing to this effort. I think that the POSSE workshop structure is an excellent starting point; this is especially true given its roots and focus stemming from the classroom experiences of others. My intention is to outline some activities and experiences similar to those from POSSE and then change them at various levels of breadth and depth within and across different courses. Below are some specific activities to potentially develop:
- Compare and contrast FOSS to Commercial SW projects using the guides provided for FOSS Field Trip
The outcome here would be to comprehend the similarities and differences in the various dimensions characterizing SW projects. While much of the detailed data available via SourceForge and ohloh would be a challenge to find for commercial vendors, students would be able to articulate important questions about projects independent of type (FOSS vs. Comm). This could be extremely useful in a job or internship interview setting.
- Focus on Documentation
As was pointed on in Andy Lester's Blog, documentation often "gets short shrift." As is common in most CS/IT/SWE programs, the "D-word" carries a burdensome and negative image. And as we all well know, documentation is at least as important as the code when it comes to project management and evaluation. For this activity I would ask students to examine various FOSS project documentation for its clarity of writing, topical focus, and relevancy to its intended purpose. Then based on the use of objectively defined rubrics and standards, the documentation would be rewritten and peer-evaluated. The final step would be to propose submission to the FOSS project. Clearly this is a writing intensive assignment lacks a certain sex appeal, but is one of the biggest differentiators for students in getting hired and eventually promoted; nobody likes documenting.
- Enhancing Coder self-efficacy
Needless to say, making coding contributions to a FOSS project is what many of us aspire to. It is the most popular aspect, the first thought by those interested, but at the same time deemed out of reach. Several of the POSSE articles for this section discuss the fact that even though "genius coders" are not necessary, it seems my code is likely not good enough to contribute. I believe this is a mind-set and something to be overcome though practice and comparison and contract. In this activity, after examining what FOSS is and its rich history and usefulness, I would identify within a FOSS project some code that performs some specific action or behavior. I would recast that code block into a well formed and detailed SRS (complete with style and functional & structural requirement) and make it a programming assignment. Upon completion, the students code would be compared and contrasted to what is actually used in the FOSS project. I would escalate the complexity of the problems and code until students coding self-efficacy increased -- as well as their objective ability. Now we are confident in our ability and ready to make a contribution.
