Reading to Write Code: An Experience Report of a Reverse Engineering and Modeling Course

Abstract

A substantial portion of any software engineer's job is reading code. Despite the criticality of this skill in a budding software engineer, reading code-and more specifically, techniques on how to read code when integrating oneself into a large existing software project-is often neglected in the typical software engineering education. As part of a new professional Master of Software Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, we designed and delivered a "reading to write code" course from the ground up. Titled Reverse Engineering and Modeling, the course introduces students to techniques they can use to become familiar with a large code base, so they are able to make meaningful contributions. In this paper, we briefly introduce the Master program and its underlying philosophy, articulate the course's learning outcomes, present the design of the course, and provide a detailed reflection on our experiences in terms of what went well, what did not go well, what we do not know yet, and what our next steps are in preparing for the forthcoming incarnation of the course in Spring 2022. In so doing, we hope to provide a baseline together with lessons learned for others who may be interested in instituting a similar course at their institution.

Teaching and Promoting Engagement with OSS: Yet Another Experience Report

“…LO4 Understand aspects related contributing to OSS projects. The contribution to the selected OSS required at least sending a patch or making a pull request (PR), taking into account the project's standards and social conventions [11].…”

“…• Free Software Foundation (FSF) 10 • Open Source Initiative (OSI) 11 • Open Sources (volume 1, chapters 1-5) 12 , The opensource.com initiative 13 , supported by RedHat 14 , hosts articles and ebooks 15 as a chronicle of the history of the open source movement in the eyes of some prolific "actors" and authors:…”

“…Dissemination. Ryan et al [11] states that students that learn and apply a principled approach to an unfamiliar system, integrated with the project's social context, and contribute a piece of code to the system, may have an important advantage in securing a future position.…”