Tutorial Patterns

By Bashar Nuseibeh

In an attempt to broaden the ICSE program, the number of tutorials on offer to delegates during the last two days rose to twenty five - a marked increase from previous years. The highest number of attendees (43) was at Pree and Sikora's half-day tutorial on "Design Patterns for Object-Oriented Software Development". Joint second place also went to half-day tutorials by Kramer and Magee - on "Distributed Software Architectures", and Fowler - on "A Survey of Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Methods" (with 40 registered attendees apiece).

I caught up with Mehdi Jazayeri, the tutorials' program co-chair, in the hotel jacuzzi - after a long hard day's work, naturally - where we discussed past and future trends of ICSE tutorials. According to Jazayeri, the number of tutorial attendees over the years has remained roughly the same (300-400), with the popularity of certain topics changing with fashion. For example, last year's top two attended tutorials were Humphrey on the Personal Software Process, and Basili and McGarry on the Experience Factory. This year these same two tutorials had around 35 and 20 attendees, respectively. A shift from process to architecture?

Preliminary feedback suggests that delegates found this year's tutorials useful and informative, and many tutorials are candidates for a repeat performance at ICSE 98 in Japan next year. What tutorials would you like to see as part of the ICSE program? Can you afford to miss Kyoto during the Cherry Blossom Season?