IEEE Software issue on ‘Algorithms for Today’s Practitioner’

I am reading the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of IEEE Software that should strike a chord with Software engineers in the offshore industry. Even financial application developers are oblivious to the need for algorithms that are not always part of the J2SE kit or an astronomically priced tool that the management here favors.

The awareness is lacking and the motivation to read about and experiment with code and algorithms is missing.

I also read the interesting interview with David Chaiken, Chief Architect of Yahoo who visited the Chennai IIT and spoke about his work in Yahoo. I was in the audience and remember that he pointed out a particular bug ID that caused some Yahoo servers in the production data centre to mishebave after he deployed a release.

My question to him was about the testing procedures that Yahoo uses for such large-scale deployments and I was looking for some tips about testing distributed applications. He just replied that Yahoo tries to use agile testing principles in some cases.

I have to rememeber to urge the local IEEE chapter to invite such speakers more frequently and also involve the developer community. There were faculty and students on that day amongst the sparse audience.