DEPARTMENT:
Editor's letter
Computing Is a Profession
The notion of what constitutes a profession has been studied extensively through exploration of its attributes. Common among these are a deep technical expertise, an essential, valued, societal contribution, and the need to adhere …
Andrew A. Chien
Page 5
Six Education
I recently had the opportunity to join several thousand teachers in Southern California for an annual confab on teaching. I came away with a very different view of elementary and secondary education than I had going in.
Vinton G. Cerf
Page 7
DEPARTMENT:
Letters to the editor
Beyond Brute Force
In "The Science of Brute Force " (August 2017), Marjin J.H. Heule and Oliver Kullmann humorously asked whether a mathematician using brute force is really "a kind of barbaric monster."
CACM Staff
Pages 8-9
DEPARTMENT:
BLOG@CACM
Manipulating Word Representations, and Preparing Students For Coding Jobs?
Robin K. Hill mulls an aspect of natural language processing research, while Mark Guzdial ponders why coding is taught in public schools.
Robin K. Hill, Mark Guzdial
Pages 12-13
COLUMN:
News
3D-Printing Human Body Parts
Bioprinting has generated bones, cartilage, and some muscles; hearts and livers are still years away.
Keith Kirkpatrick
Pages 15-17
Digital Hearing
Advances in audio processing help separate the conversation from background noise.
Don Monroe
Pages 18-20
Portable Device Fears Show Power of Social Development
How do small screens impact young minds?
Chris Edwards
Pages 21-22
COLUMN:
Technology strategy and management
Amazon and Whole Foods: Follow the Strategy (and the Money)
Checking out the recent Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods.
Michael A. Cusumano
Pages 24-26
COLUMN:
Inside risks
The Real Risks of Artificial Intelligence
Incidents from the early days of AI research are instructive in the current AI environment.
David Lorge Parnas
Pages 27-31
COLUMN:
Economic and business dimensions
Fintech Platforms and Strategy
Integrating trust and automation in finance.
Vasant Dhar, Roger M. Stein
Pages 32-35
COLUMN:
Kode vicious
IoT: The Internet of Terror
If it seems like the sky is falling, that's because it is.
George V. Neville-Neil
Pages 36-37
COLUMN:
Viewpoint
What Can Agile Methods Bring to High-Integrity Software Development?
Considering the issues and opportunities raised by Agile practices in the development of high-integrity software.
Roderick Chapman, Neil White, Jim Woodcock
Pages 38-41
SECTION:
Practice
Metaphors We Compute By
Code is a story that explains how to solve a particular problem.
Alvaro Videla
Pages 42-45
Research For Practice: Technology For Underserved Communities; Personal Fabrication
Expert-curated guides to the best of CS research.
Peter Bailis, Tawanna Dillahunt, Stefanie Mueller, Patrick Baudisch
Pages 46-49
Four Ways to Make CS and IT More Immersive
Why the Bell curve hasn't transformed into a hockey stick.
Thomas A. Limoncelli
Pages 50-52
SECTION:
Contributed articles
Barriers to Refactoring
Developers know refactoring improves their software, but many find themselves unable to do so when they want to.
Ewan Tempero, Tony Gorschek, Lefteris Angelis
Pages 54-61
Millennials' Attitudes Toward It Consumerization in the Workplace
Millennials entering the workforce ignore the risks of using privately owned devices on the job.
Heiko Gewald, Xuequn Wang, Andy Weeger, Mahesh S. Raisinghani, Gerald Grant, Otavio Sanchez, Siddhi Pittayachawan
Pages 62-69
SECTION:
Review articles
Internet Advertising: Technology, Ethics, and a Serious Difference of Opinion
Exploring the technical and ethical issues surrounding Internet advertising and ad blocking.
Stephen B. Wicker, Kolbeinn Karlsson
Pages 70-79
SECTION:
Research highlights
Technical Perspective: Broadening and Deepening Query Optimization Yet Still Making Progress
"Multi-Objective Parametric Query Optimization," by Immanuel Trummer and Christoph Koch is a remarkable tour de force exploration of the combination of both parametric and multi-objective query optimization.
Jeffrey F. Naughton
Page 80
Multi-Objective Parametric Query Optimization
We propose a generalization of the classical database query optimization problem: multi-objective parametric query (MPQ) optimization.
Immanuel Trummer, Christoph Koch
Pages 81-89
Technical Perspective: Shedding New Light on an Old Language Debate
"A Large-Scale Study of Programming Languages and Code Quality in GitHub," by Baishakhi Ray, et al., studies whether programming language choice and code quality are related.
Jeffrey S. Foster
Page 90
A Large-Scale Study of Programming Languages and Code Quality in Github
What is the effect of programming languages on software quality? In this study, we gather a very large data set from GitHub in an attempt to shed some empirical light on this question.
Baishakhi Ray, Daryl Posnett, Premkumar Devanbu, Vladimir Filkov
Pages 91-100
COLUMN:
Last byte
Partitioned Peace
Imagine a set of red and blue hill towns connected by a network of roads. When a person from a red town travels through a blue town or vice versa, things can get unpleasant.
Dennis Shasha
Pages 112-ff