Are bugs more expensive to fix in production?
Everyone knows that the cost of fixing a bug grows exponentially as it progresses through development phases. But is that actually true?
The Toilet Paper
Design patterns for energy-efficient Web applications
Applying these design patterns in your code may (or may not) make your web applications more energy-efficient.
The challenges of microservice API evolution
Evolving microservice APIs requires a lot of work, both from the providing and the consuming side.
Visual disinformation on alternative media platforms
Alternative media platforms and their communities use visual disinformation in a variety of ways.
Mapping the use of AI in counter-disinformation
Most initiatives that use artificial intelligence to combat disinformation are clustered around two continents.
Scaling the API design review process at Google
Google’s API Governance process makes sure that the design and development of its APIs meets the company’s standards.
Prompt patterns for LLMs that help you design better software
Large language models (LLMs) may not be replacing developers anytime soon, but can still be of use in the design process.
Using humour to make software development more enjoyable
This study looks at how humour can fuel developer engagement in open-source and professional contexts.
Recovering software architectures via chain-of-thought prompting
Large language models can be used to deduce to what extent your system’s implementation still adheres to a reference architecture.
Comparing algorithms for extracting content from web pages
This study pits 14 open-source main content extractors against each other and arrives at a somewhat surprising conclusion.
The challenges of end-to-end testing and how to face them
End-to-end tests can help you discover problems in web applications, but sadly are not free of problems themselves.
Supersharers of fake news on Twitter during the 2020 US presidential election
Supersharers managed to reach 5.2% of registered voters. In contrast, Russia’s 2016 campaign only reached 3.4% of voters.
Why some researchers publish in predatory journals
Although predatory journals may sound scary, they are actually quite friendly (and after your money).
Can public service broadcasting survive Silicon Valley?
Public service broadcasting has served us well in the 20th century. How can it keep serving us well (well) into the 21st century?
Sharing software engineering research on LinkedIn
Sharing is caring, but if you really care about sharing research you should probably do more than just share links to papers.
How cellular-based technologies have transformed live broadcasting
New live broadcasting technologies have transformed how news organisations work, in both good and bad ways.
Helm may be a popular solution, but not necessarily a safe one
Helm charts are re-usable packages for Kubernetes resources. They are easy to share and use, but this comes at a price.
A theory of Scrum team effectiveness
How can an organisation best support Scrum teams? This paper proposes and validates a theory for effective Scrum teams.
How software developers deal with flaky tests
Flaky tests can cause CI builds to fail unexpectedly, and should be fixed as quickly as possible. This study shows why.
Why people find it hard to review code
The experience of reviewing code is negatively impacted by a number of misalignments, which are described in this paper.
A comparison of open tracing tools
I’m in the market for a tool that can help me analyse logs, traces, and metrics, and I was hoping that this paper could help me pick one.
GitHub Actions is eating the world
Since its introduction a few years ago, GitHub Actions has become the dominant CI service. How did this affect competing CI services?
How laypeople try (and fail) to design LLM prompts
Coming up with good prompts for LLMs like ChatGPT can be quite a challenge. This study sheds some light on what makes it so hard.
Can a good philosophical contribution be made just by asking a question?