Another semester is starting tomorrow and I’m set to take a Software Metrics class and a Formal Methods class. Even though 2 classes plus 40 hours of work every week is a lot, I’ve been looking forward to these two classes. I’ve seen, at work, how important metrics can be. It forms the basis for a lot of project planning and is ultimately a big part of how a software department is judged as successful or unsuccessful (aside from revenue).
Formal Methods has consistently been described to me as the most useless class in the Software Engineering program. I haven’t taken this class, but I have to disagree. In terms of decomposing requirements into test cases, I can see where formal methods would be quite helpful. Why are people so freaking scared of propositional logic and discrete math? If we’re all interested in computers, then why is this such a big deal? It reminds me that 75% of the people in my schools CS, SWE and IT programs are only there for a paycheck, which is saddening. I live in the hope that the faculty and staff will stop pandering to these wusses and include more classes like Formal Methods in the curriculum.
Somehow this semester, I will also have to complete about half of a thesis paper. Over the break, I’ve been reading Ben Fry’s book about Data Visualization and working with his graphics program, Processing. I’ve found a paper about visualizing quality, and hopefully the pair will help me along.
Happy New Year!