Useful Little Things

As part of the class I’m taking on software process, I was required to write a short paper on a course-related topic.  The topic I chose was Joel Spolsky’s Evidence-Based Scheduling (EBS) technique.

I approached the topic with a critical eye toward its aspects, strengths, and weaknesses.  Hopefully, this could serve as an unbiased reference for someone interested in the topic of task scheduling, EBS, and Monte Carlo style simulations.  Keep in mind that this paper was not written to be submitted to a journal publication and, therefore, is more of an expert opinion on the subject, rather than a definitive piece of research.

The paper is available online and as a PDF.

Note: The online version has a few formatting problems, for which I blame Microsoft Word, since I let it do the conversion.  The PDF version is the truest rendering of the work.

So the first week of school at Auburn as a PhD student has left me with a few new accomplishments under my belt.

1. Six minutes into my first (ever) PhD class, I derailed the professor’s train of thought with my cell phone ringing.  Oh yeah, he’s also the Department Head.
2. I started learning a new programming language: Python.
3. I got the swine flu.

All in all, I’d say things are starting off with a bang!