Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM 

Monday, March 30, 1998 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

Tim Korson

ABSTRACT -- The way internet-enabled, distributed software systems are built today is very different from the way mainframe FORTRAN systems were built. But the state of software engineering practice is still far behind the current state of the art. We know how to engineer good software systems, but usually we don't. Programmers prefer to hack code, and managers are not willing to insist on high quality designs for fear that it will cause them to miss a deadline. 

This talk presents a candid look at the current state of software development. Organizations talk about COTS, reuse, automatic code generation, and round trip software engineering, but are they willing to fundamentally change the way they fund and build systems? Dr. Korson draws on his extensive industrial experience to illustrate each of the key points in this seminar.

SPEAKER: Dr. Korson holds a BA in French and a MS in Math, and received his Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems from Georgia State University. He taught Software Engineering at Clemson University for 8 years and is now Dean of the School of Computing at Southern Adventist University and Senior Partner of the consulting firm Software Architects. Dr. korson has extensive embedded systems experience working with clients such as NASA, AT&T, Lucent/Bell Labs, IBM, HP, NBC, Delta, and Worldcom. His special area of interest is object-oriented software development techniques, and he gives frequent tutorials on the subject at conferences such as OOPSLA, C++ world, and the International Conference on Software Engineering. He is a columnist for Object Magazine and co-author of the book "Object Centers of Excellence."  For additional information, visit http://www.software-architects.com/ (a non-NASA link).