Guest Editors' Introduction: Software Patterns

Patterns have become part of the software development mainstream. They're available for all phases of the development process, including analysis, documentation, design, testing, and configuration management, to name a few. In addition to documenting the current status of software patterns, this special issue will reflect critically on and discuss the achievements of the pattern community. This article is part of a special issue on software patterns.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Recommender Systems

This special issue presents eight articles, five long and three short, on techniques to improve recommender systems. They cover improving such aspects as user interaction with recommenders, the quality of results presented to users, and user trust in presented recommendations. This article is part of a special issue on Recommender Systems.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: End-User Software Engineering

Millions of people program to support their work but don't call themselves programmers. The field of end-user software engineering is concerned with helping these people create reliable, dependable, and reusable programs, without distracting them from their primary tasks. This special issue of IEEE Software presents a selection of research from this field, providing a glimpse of some of the exciting advances made in past 10 years of research and development.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Mining Software Archives

Modern programming environments automatically collect lots of data on software development, notably changes and defects. The field of mining software archives is concerned with the automated extraction, collection, and abstraction of information from this data. This is the introduction to a special issue of IEEE Software presenting a selection of the exciting research that is taking place in the field.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Dependable Agent Systems

It is well known that building dependable software systems for dynamic environments is difficult. It is also well known that building large-scale distributed software systems is difficult. The relatively few attempts to combine these two tasks confirm that successfully building large-scale distributed systems with predictable dependability properties is exceptionally difficult. The articles in this special issue of IEEE Intelligent Systems deal with this issue and discuss an emerging and exciting new approach to building these most challenging kinds of systems.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Software Engineering Curriculum Development

The first software engineering programs were at the graduate level, primarily as terminal master's degrees for those already developing commercial and industrial software. By the early 1990s, educators began to consider software engineering's role at the undergraduate level. This special issue's articles reflect the common foundations of both baccalaureate and master's programs as well as diverse approaches to teaching software engineering. This article is part of a special issue on Software Engineering Curriculum Development.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Embedded Software Technologies and Trends

Our world and society are shaped and governed by embedded systems. Examples of embedded systems include pacemakers, implanted biosensors, RFID tags, cell phones, home appliances, satellites, train control systems, and automotive components. In this special-issue introduction, we provide a snapshot of the topic of embedded software. We show its similarities to general-purpose IT and highlight embedded systems' peculiarities. In addition to highlighting trends and topics worth thinking about, we relate hands-on experiences from industry projects from which all of us can learn, independent of which type of software and domain we deal with in our day-to-day engineering work.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Software Testing Practices in Industry

Four papers and a roundtable discussion shed light on the current state of software testing practices. Case studies from industry experience address topics including unit-testing practices, agile testing, and automating software testing. Although many of these approaches show promise, software testing is still one of the more neglected practices within the software development life cycle. Suggestions for improvements in industry and academia are offered.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Intelligent Systems for Interactive Entertainment

This special issue presents research in innovative aspects of intelligent interactive entertainment (IE) that haven't seen much publication yet. AI researchers find IE interesting because it requires systems that think, behave, and interact the way that real people do. An invited article discusses the challenges, important trends, and future directions for intelligent IE. The other selected articles deal with a variety of topics: generating nonrepetitive behavior of nonplayer characters in video games; 3D virtual characters using speech, posture, pointing, and involuntary movements to interact with 2D presentations; applying a movie set metaphor to manage multiple software agents in dynamic scenarios; using spatial and temporal coherence as constraints for defining synchronization of actions and turn-taking in location-based games; adding humorous one-liners to text-based applications; and a user interface in which objects react and adapt to the user's focus of attention. This article is part of a special issue on interactive entertainment.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Building and Evaluating Ubiquitous System Software

From its inception, plenty of vision has existed in ubiquitous computing. This issue concentrates on how to realize the software infrastructure for that vision: on building and evaluating system software. Ubiquitous computing raises major challenges for system software researchers, mainly because of the heterogeneity and volatility that characterizes it. The set of participating users, hardware, and software in ubiquitous computing environments is highly dynamic and unpredictable. How far have we come in meeting the challenges?     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Developing Scientific Software, Part 2

This guest editors' introduction introduces a special issue on scientific software development. This issue is a sequel to the July/August 2008 issue, whose 6 articles provided some flavor of the variety of such software. Part 2 of this theme focuses on practices for improving the relationships between users, developers, and software.