(Last modified Tue Apr 29 12:48 2008)
Catalog description: "Studies techniques for developing confidence in software from traditional testing schemes to integrated, multitechnique analytic approaches. Considers strengths and weaknesses and explores opportunities for synergistic technique application. Emphasis is on approaches integrated into the software process."
Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never their absence.
E.W. Dijkstra, "Notes on structured programming".
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Donald Knuth (personal communication to P. Boas)
TuTh 2:00-3:20pm, ICS 253
Exam slot: Jun 12 Th 1:30-3:30pm
Thomas Alspaugh
office: 5224 ICS3
office hours: 9:00-10:00, 12:30-1:30 Th
lastname at ics dot uci dot edu
Only email with subject beginning "215" and
from a UCI account is guaranteed an answer.
Replies to questions about course material or work
will be posted to the class mailing list.
There is no required textbook for this class. We will work from papers in the literature.
Students will become familiar with the issues, areas, and techniques of software analysis and testing; become prepared to learn to apply them in practice; become familiar with trends and specific research in this area; and conduct initial research themselves on a topic in the area.
The course will consist of lectures by the professor, student presentation of papers from the literature, and class discussion. The quarter's papers are listed on the class readings page.
A typical class meeting will consist of student presentation of a paper followed by (and sometimes also preceded by) class discussion of it (about 50 minutes in total), twice. Each presentation will be done jointly by 2 students, workshop-style (15-20 minutes), with 2 student discussants (5 minutes each), followed by questions and class discussion. Every student is expected to have read that day's paper, to participate in the questions and discussion, and to be good-natured when put on the spot by me without warning: understanding the paper is optional, but reading and participation is not.
Presenters:
please upload your slides to the EEE Inf215 SharedStudentFiles dropbox.
Name your file with the date of your presentation,
followed by the bib key for your paper, thus:
2008-04-03.Bertolino2003-strp.ppt
(for the Bertonlino paper presented on Apr 3).
You are expected to be reasonably familiar with sets, relations and orders, ordered sets, and propositional and first-order logic. We will briskly run through these areas early in the quarter, and jointly remedy any lacks in understanding.
Based on the number of students registered, it looks like each student will present 4 papers from the list. I recommend (but do not require) that students work between class meetings in pairs or larger groups to read and discuss papers and prepare for presentations; each presentation will be done by two students and evaluated to those students' credit.
Students will work in pairs to choose a research topic in the area, do work on the topic, write an end-of-quarter paper, and do a 25-minute presentation of this paper (5 minutes for questions) at the end of the quarter. This end-of-quarter paper will be of conference length (10pp) and format (as if submitted to ASE). All work on the end-of-quarter paper including the presentation will be done in pairs.
Students will be graded based on their
There will be no final exam.
I fully expect every student can and will achieve an A in this class, but it is certainly possible for you to avoid this fate by failing to show up on time or at all to class meetings (including the end-of-quarter presentations), by not reading each day's paper, and/or by not producing a good end-of-quarter paper and presenting it adequately. See me if you have questions on how you specifically can get a grade lower than an A.
Because we will fit two presentation-and-discussions into most class meetings, it is important that each of you be present and ready at the beginning of class; please strive to achieve this for every meeting. See me ahead of time if this expectation causes any difficulty for you, either in general or for specific class meetings.
Written work will receive markedly and increasingly less credit if presented late. Here is an explanation of proofreading markup in your written work (if I grade a printed copy).
You are expected to be familiar with and conform to the principles of academic honesty.
Any student who feels he or she may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss his or her specific needs. Also contact the Disability Services Center at (949) 824-7494 as soon as possible to better ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion.
