The Shape of Code

I am teaching a workshop, analyzing software engineering data, on 16 January 2016. If you meet the assumed level of know-how (basic understanding of maths to GCSE level, fluent in at least one programming language {i.e., written 10k+ lines of code} and will turn up with a laptop that has R installed), then you are welcome to sign up, its free. The event is being organized by ACCU London.

The focus is on extracting information that is useful to practicing software developers for creating software systems; statistics is used as a tool to find patterns in the data (R is used for this and the programs have the form: read_data(); format_data(); appropriate_statistical_function(); plot_results() and are usually contained in 10-30 lines).

The maths/programming requirements are there because the focus is on the software engineering ideas implied by the data; people need to implicitly understand how an equation fits together (not because there will be lots of algebra, there isn’t) and to be able to pick up and use a new language quickly.

The material is based on a book I am working on.

Its a hands-on workshop, with me talking for an hour or so and then everybody analyzing data for an hour, repeating until end-of-day. I have plenty of data for you to work on, but if you do have some software engineering data that you are willing to share with everybody, please bring it along.

The workshop is something of an experiment; as far as I know there are no books or courses aimed at software developers interested in analyzing software engineering data (there are a few books containing an assortment of academic papers). If the material is too easy I can speed up, if it is too hard then I will slow down; if the material is of no practical use we can all leave early.

The plan is to start at the beginning and cover all the important topics in software engineering. Obviously this requires more than a one day workshop. If there is enough interest there will be more workshops covering different topics (assuming I have time to organize the material and an available venue permitting).