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2 minute read

Published: September 06, 2017

My collaborators and I started GenProg, “Genetic/Generic Program Repair (Depending on Whom You Ask)”, in 2008, maybe a month or so after GitHub was launched. My grad school research group was hip and up-to-date in our development tools, primarily evidenced by the fact that we used Subversion instead of CVS. Even in 2011, when we started putting together what became the ManyBugs dataset, it was still completely reasonable to find open source projects to study by trolling Sourceforge. Which is exactly what we did.

Conference Networking, or, Just Talk to Whomever, with Anecdotes

5 minute read

Published: May 14, 2017

It’s summer conference time, and Phil Guo recently posted a handy how-to on “Attending Professional Conferences as a Newcomer”, which reminded me to finish this one up. His post is probably more actionable; here, I elaborate on a related piece of advice in a way that is hopefully complementary.

My original PWLConf reading list on patch generation

6 minute read

Published: September 16, 2016

I loved speaking at the inaugural Papers We Love conference, co-located with Strange Loop, in the disarmingly cool city of St. Louis. I’d never been to or spoken at a PWL event before, but I’ve had a great time getting to know the community. The basic idea is a bunch of meetups where participants (a mix of industry and academic types) present/discuss academic papers that they, well, love.

Things I Keep Repeating About Writing

9 minute read

Published: August 23, 2016

I often write papers with students, or read students’ papers to provide comments, and I find myself saying the same things over and over, especially the first time out.* So: here’s a blog post I can point them to to (hopefully!) save us all some time and trouble. I plan to update it as I remember more things I say repeatedly.

A reluctant ICSE submission cap post or, an exploration of primary sources

4 minute read

Published: May 16, 2016

[ETA: the Townhall will start at 5:45 in the Glass Oaks room, and will include time for discussion and questions, as well as a panel of experts and senior members of the community who will address the issue.]

A reluctant ICSE submission cap post or, an exploration of primary sources

8 minute read

Published: April 21, 2016

(Context: I was on the ICSE 2016 PC and I am on the ICSE 2017 PC. I have never submitted more than three papers to ICSE.)

What The Bachelor Teaches Us About Choosing a PhD Advisor

less than 1 minute read

Published: March 17, 2016

Two of my ongoing professional quests are to provide insight the processes of CS academia to those who would benefit from it and to increase the number of people who meet me and say “Oh, I know about you! Jean Yang mentioned you on her blog!” To those ends, over at her blog, Jean and I collaborated on some advice to prospective CS PhD students choosing between potential advisors, with lessons from our favorite reality TV show.

Free/Fair? Or, A Somewhat Bizarre Request to Fellow Harvard Alums

11 minute read

Published: January 24, 2016

Hey, fellow Harvard alums: This year, when you get a ballot for the Harvard Board of Overseers Election in the snail-mail, instead of throwing it away without looking at it: don’t. Instead: vote.

CS PhDs and US Immigration Policy, a Long and Pointlessly Insane Saga

4 minute read

Published: November 01, 2015

(Should I be working on a grant proposal? Yes, yes I should. Am I writing a blog post instead? Yes, yes I am.)

One Motto, Three Rules of Thumb

6 minute read

Published: October 02, 2015

SSSG[1], the ISR SE program’s weekly research symposium, typically features the SE PhD students (and, less commonly, faculty) presenting either their work, or surveys of the work of others. From time to time, though, we go a bit meta. This week, I gave a talk on talks, specifically on how I approach the task of structuring a research presentation [2]. I was asked, and am happy, to send out/link to/otherwise circulate the slides. The tricky bit is that they’re heavy on illustrative/goofy pictures and light on, you know, content. I therefore added a bit of blog-based commentary to go with them (not the full talk, but enough to hopefully render the slides a bit more sensible). The notes roughly follow the slides.

Industry vs. Academia, or, the Grey Lady Misses the Point

4 minute read

Published: September 13, 2015

Emery peer pressured me to blog, presumably rather than ranting entirely in Facebook posts, which is where a moderately shorter version of this first appeared. I admit this does feel a hair more legitimate. At least, I feel less compelled to apologize for the length.)

Double-blind review at SSBSE

7 minute read

Published: September 12, 2015

As PC co-chair for the Symposium for Search-Based Software Engineering in 2014, I participated in the Organizing Committee’s discussion about and decision to implement double-blind submission review for the main research track. On behalf of the Organizing Committee, I composed a post explaining the reasoning behind the experiment. That post was moved around as it became less relevant to the conference (…after reviews were concluded). Since more than two people have since asked for a link to it, it seemed reasonable to reproduce it here.