Blog 14: IDB4 Continued
1. What did you do this past week?
This past week, my team and I continued to work on the final phase of the IDB project. We are making great progress and have begun to prepare for our presentation next week.
2. What’s in your way?
Unfortunately, many of my classes share common deadlines, so I currently have to write two essays and complete two projects in a common time frame. While the workload seems fairly heavy, I know I can complete everything on time as long as I do not fall behind.
3. What will you do next week?
Next week, I will work with my group to finalize our project and finish preparations for our presentation. While I have enjoyed the IDB project as a whole, I am looking forward to having another project off of my to-do list.
4. What did you think of Paper #14: The New Methodology?
I really enjoyed reading Paper 14 because I personally have not heard agile methods discussed in depth in any of my prior classes. I understand that agile methods may not pertain the individual work that we produce, but it would still be nice to learn about the methods currently used in industry — especially when many companies ask about agile methods in their interviews.
5. What was your experience of refactoring?
I felt much better about refactoring this week because we have had more time to learn and practice during this week’s lectures. The exercise completed this week really helped solidify the refactoring concepts for my understanding.
6. What made you happy this week?
This week, one of my friends who spent the semester in Nevada for a co-op finally returned to Austin. I really enjoyed getting to see them because I will be graduating and moving out of Austin soon.
7. What’s your pick-of-the-week?
This article by Erik Wirtanen highlights the research goals of a computer science team out of Arizona State University. Ruoyu Wang and his team are working to create standardized decompilation tools so that source code can be obtained easily from malware and viruses. The article points out that malware architects have followed software engineers in the use of high-level programming languages, and current analysis techniques make obtaining and reading source code difficult. Such tools produced by Wang’s team will also be able to transform between different programming languages, allowing researchers to view malware source code in their language of preference. Understanding the current security threats is a vital piece of the puzzle to producing secure software, and Wang’s team hopes to make that piece easier to access for all software developers.
