How Many Trees Will Redeem My Lifetime Miles?

Posted on September 1, 2019 by crista

I have a very conflicted relationship with airplane travel. On the one hand, my lifestyle — both personal and professional — depends on it and, in particular, on long-distance flights. On the other, I hate that airplanes are so damn bad for the environment, and that there are no signs of them getting any better any time soon.

Recently, due to inevitable family circumstances, I came into possession of a relatively large piece of land in Portugal, some of which had been woodland before a series of fires completely ruined it. I’m looking at this at as opportunity for redemption. If I replant these areas, will it be enough to offset my lifetime CO2-e due to my frequent air travel? That’d be really nice.

To answer my question, I need two estimates. The first one is the estimate of how many miles I flew in airplanes so far. That can then be converted to CO2 emissions (CO2-e) using one of the many calculators out there. The second one is an estimate for how much CO2 a tree absorbs over its lifetime.

Here are the calculations. Continue reading →

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Programming Journal: Call for Essays

Posted on February 10, 2018 by crista

The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming journal is teaming up with the Onward! conference regarding essays. In this year’s Onward! Essays’ Instructions for Authors, authors are given the choice of publication venue. They can either do it as before — i.e. publish the essay in the Onward! proceedings book, published by the ACM; or they can submit the essay to a special issue of the Programming Journal, and present it at the Onward! conference. The submission deadline for this special issue is April 23, 2018, and the issue is scheduled to be published in September, 2018.

In other words, the live event Onward! will feature oral presentations of essays from two publications: an ACM conference proceedings monograph and a special issue of the Programming Journal.

Why this?

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To Big Or Not To Big

Posted on June 3, 2017 by crista

Giraffe koure niger 2006

Big data is everywhere. Not surprisingly, it has come to our neck of the woods, too: research in software engineering, programming languages, and computer science in general. I’ve done a fair amount of work with it, and I suspect that will not stop. But do we really need big data? When is “big” really necessary and when is it, well, just a showoff? Here’s a reflection on this topic, just to reinforce the point that more is not always better. It all depends on what we are trying to achieve.

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Walk the Talk

Posted on January 8, 2017 by crista

Ba b747-400 g-bnle arp

This post is primarily targeted at the Computer Science research communities that surround the ACM and the IEEE, but it applies to all tech communities that gravitate around conferences. I believe that an overwhelming majority of people in these communities is concerned about the effect that global warming is having on the Earth’s climate; many of us also know the urgency of the necessary measures. The question is: are we ready to act on what most of us believe, and reduce the amount of air travel we do for conferences? Or are we going to continue to live as if it doesn’t matter?

This post makes a radical proposal: let’s reduce and limit the number of physical conferences  organized by the ACM and the IEEE down to a reasonable number. Something like one physical conference per SIG per year. Read on.

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Posted in computer scientists, conferences | 10 Comments

Divide by Zero! and Other Propaganda

Posted on December 15, 2016 by crista

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this incredible moment in history. In trying to wrap my head around it, I’m turning to what I know best: programs, programming, and software-intensive systems. And their flaws. This is a mini-essay on how the line between software systems and social systems is completely blurred, and how what we know of software can inform, or explain, the hyper-connected, information-rich world we live in.

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Laws of Performant Software

Posted on September 19, 2016 by crista

Learning how to write performant code is hard. Here are a few simple laws that I hope will convey the core of the matter. I’m calling them…

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Posted in advice, engineering, research | Tagged | 17 Comments

The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming

Posted on September 10, 2016 by crista

I’ve been relatively low key about something that I’m very excited about, so, after several months of planning, and a first, somewhat quiet, submission deadline, it’s time to release my enthusiasm. A group of us have started a new conference called <Programming>  associated with a new open-access journal called The Art, Science and Engineering of Programming. Here are some FAQs about this initiative. Continue reading →

Posted in academia, conferences, publications, research | 3 Comments

Automation

Posted on August 27, 2016 by crista

Google's Lexus RX 450h Self-Driving Car

As a computer scientist specializing in programming, the social consequences of software-for-business-efficiency are worrying me more and more. Here at home, we’ve been having a conversation about what post-capitalism would look like in the face of quasi-universal automation, in the best case scenario. It’s really hard to tie all the loose ends of such a vision. It’s sort of like Communism, but where people don’t need to work in order to have a decent life; the machines do all the work for us. There would be no money. All basic needs would be available free of charge. Food? Free. Transportation? Free. Housing? Free. Health care? Free. Education? Free. Justice? Free. Law and order? Free. No need to work, other than voluntarily. Everything would be provided by an automated production system powered by intelligent software.

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Constraints

Posted on June 3, 2016 by crista

This post comes from an email conversation going on related to programming languages vs. libraries. The story goes that these days, the major productivity gains come not from new languages but from the existence of libraries that already do almost everything for you. That is unquestionable. These days people don’t choose programming languages as much as they choose libraries and frameworks that already do most of the work for them, and that happen to be written in some programming language or another. One can argue that these powerful libraries and frameworks stand in the shoulders of a lot of work in programming languages that became invisible by design. But that work has already been done, to the point that these powerful libraries are already out there.

So where does this leave programming languages? Are we done yet?

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Distributed Systems Testing: The Lost World

Posted on January 23, 2016 by crista

After failing to find good papers about distributed systems testing for many months, yesterday I asked a question in Twitter:

This got many retweets and some interesting replies, so I’m going to summarize them here. Then I’ll explain a bit more about why I’m interested in this topic.

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