Hi, I'm César

Empirical software engineering research is harder than you think

Trust me

Posted on October 15, 2020

You are a very talented researcher. Perhaps you come from a favored field, e.g., from the popular machine learning (ML) research community. But now, you have decided to expand your horizons and solve software engineering (SE) problems. Hence, for the next years, you will be working as an empirical SE...

The Producer-Consumer pattern in Java made easy

An example using BlockingQueue interface

Posted on June 28, 2020

I see the usage of a recurring handy pattern for doing data collection and analysis in software engineering: the producer-consumer pattern. This pattern simplifies the data acquisition (handled by the Producer), and the data post-processing (handled by the Consumer). The Producer collects the data items one at the time and...

Diversity-driven software debloat

Leveraging the wisdom of multiple coverage tools

Posted on June 8, 2020

For months, I have worked on dynamic debloat of Java artifacts with JDBL. To do so, I need to compile and execute software applications to determine what parts of the compiled application are used when executing it using some workloads. Then, with the collected usage information, I debloat the unused...

Unix cmd hacks

Boosting automation from the shell

Posted on May 23, 2020

I want to share my personal notes of the edX course Unix Tools: Data, Software and Production Engineering, by Prof. Diomidis Spinellis. I attended this course from March to June, 2020. It was my first MOOC experience. I have to say that I learned a lot in this course, and...

Recipes for effective academic emailing

A template-based approach

Posted on March 3, 2020

You cannot be a good researchers without being a good communicator. If you are good enough at both, they you may qualify for becoming a supervisor. Being a good academic supervisor is a matter of practice, discipline, and the development of leading skills. Handling tons of emails is the everyday...

Deploying to Maven Central

A three-steps guide

Posted on January 6, 2020

Maven Central is the de-facto repository for hosting software artifacts that compile to the JVM. In this post, I’ll describe the process of releasing a new artifact in Maven Central following an step-by-step approach.