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Full-Text Articles in Programming Languages and Compilers

Tests As Maintainable Assets Via Auto-Generated Spies: A Case Study Involving The Scala Collections Library's Iterator Trait, Konstantin Läufer, John O'Sullivan, George K. Thiruvathukal Jun 2019

Tests As Maintainable Assets Via Auto-Generated Spies: A Case Study Involving The Scala Collections Library's Iterator Trait, Konstantin Läufer, John O'Sullivan, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

In testing stateful abstractions, it is often necessary to record interactions, such as method invocations, and express assertions over these interactions. Following the Test Spy design pattern, we can reify such interactions programmatically through additional mutable state. Alternatively, a mocking framework, such as Mockito, can automatically generate test spies that allow us to record the interactions and express our expectations in a declarative domain-specific language. According to our study of the test code for Scala’s Iterator trait, the latter approach can lead to a significant reduction of test code complexity in terms of metrics such as code size (in some …


Experiences With Scala Across The College-Level Curriculum, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Mark C. Lewis Jul 2017

Experiences With Scala Across The College-Level Curriculum, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Mark C. Lewis

George K. Thiruvathukal

Various hybrid-functional languages, designed to balance compile-time error detection, conciseness, and performance, have emerged. Scala, e.g., is interoperable with Java and has become an early leader in adoption, especially in the start-up and open-source spaces. As educators, we have recognized Scala’s value as a teaching language across the CS curriculum. In CS1, the read-eval-print loop and simple, uniform syntax aid programming in the small. In CS2, higher-order methods allow concise, efficient manipulation of collections. In a programming languages course, advanced constructs facilitate the separation of concerns, program representation and interpretation, and concurrent programming. In advanced applied courses, language mechanisms and …


Spring­11: Pdc In Cs1/2 And A Mobile/Cloud Intermediate Mobile/Cloud Intermediate Software Design Course, Joseph P. Kaylor, Konstantin Läufer, Chandra N. Sekharan, George K. Thiruvathukal Jul 2013

Spring­11: Pdc In Cs1/2 And A Mobile/Cloud Intermediate Mobile/Cloud Intermediate Software Design Course, Joseph P. Kaylor, Konstantin Läufer, Chandra N. Sekharan, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

Recent changes in the environment of Loyola University Chicago’s Department of Computer Science include a better differentiation of our four undergraduate majors, growing interest in computing among science majors, and an increased demand for graduates with mobile and cloud skills. In our continued effort to incorporate parallel and distributed computing topics into the undergraduate curriculum, we are focusing on these three existing courses: CS1: In response to a request from the physics department, we started to offer a CS1 section aimed at majors in physics and other hard sciences this spring semester. This section includes some material on numerical methods …


Network Technologies Used To Aggregate Environmental Data, Paul Stasiuk, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal Jul 2013

Network Technologies Used To Aggregate Environmental Data, Paul Stasiuk, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

The goal of the Loyola Weather Service (lws) project is to design and build a system of functioning environmental monitoring widgets that can intelligently and autonomously control the environment around them based on set thresholds and triggers. The widgets will also have the ability to aggregate their data and easily display this data in various ways: through a user interface in the room that the widget is placed, via a web application, and programmatically via a RESTful web service.


A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Catherine Putonti, George K. Thiruvathukal, Konstantin Läufer Jul 2013

A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Catherine Putonti, George K. Thiruvathukal, Konstantin Läufer

George K. Thiruvathukal

RNA-interference has potential therapeutic use against HIV-1 by targeting highly-functional mRNA sequences that contribute to the virulence of the virus. Empirical work has shown that within cell lines, all of the HIV-1 genes are affected by RNAi-induced gene silencing. While promising, inherent in this treatment is the fact that RNAi sequences must be highly specific. HIV, however, mutates rapidly, leading to the evolution of viral escape mutants. In fact, such strains are under strong selection to include mutations within the targeted region, evading the RNAi therapy and thus increasing the virus’ fitness in the host. Taking a phylogenetic approach, we …


Building Capable, Energy-Efficient, Flexible Visualization And Sensing Clusters From Commodity Tablets, Thomas Delgado Dias, Xian Yan, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal Jul 2013

Building Capable, Energy-Efficient, Flexible Visualization And Sensing Clusters From Commodity Tablets, Thomas Delgado Dias, Xian Yan, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

We explore the application of clusters of commodity tablet devices to problems spanning a “trilogy” of concerns: visualization, sensing, and computation. We conjecture that such clusters provide a low-cost, energy-efficient, flexible, and ultimately effective platform to tackle a wide range of problems within this trilogy. This is a work in progress, and we now elaborate our position and give a preliminary status report. A wide range of Android tablet devices are available in terms of price and capabilities. “You get what you pay for” w.r.t. display resolution, sensors, and chipset---corresponding to the trilogy. $200 gets one a 1280x800-pixel touch display, …


Reflective Remote Method Invocation, George K. Thiruvathukal, Lovely S. Thomas, Andy T. Korczynski Nov 2011

Reflective Remote Method Invocation, George K. Thiruvathukal, Lovely S. Thomas, Andy T. Korczynski

George K. Thiruvathukal

Remote Method Invocation (RMI) is available in the current Java language design and implementation, providing the much-needed capability of allowing objects running in different Java processes to collaborate using a variation on the popular Remote Procedure Call (RPC). Although RMI provides features which are desirable for high-performance distributed computing, its design and implementation are deficient in key areas of importance to the high-performance computing community in general. This paper addresses the key deficiencies of RMI and how these deficiencies affect the design and implementation of distributed object applications. Reflective RMI (RRMI) is an open RMI implementation which makes better use …


Technologies For Ubiquitous Supercomputing: A Java Interface To The Nexus Communication System, Ian Foster, George K. Thiruvathukal, Steven Tuecke Nov 2011

Technologies For Ubiquitous Supercomputing: A Java Interface To The Nexus Communication System, Ian Foster, George K. Thiruvathukal, Steven Tuecke

George K. Thiruvathukal

We use the term ubiquitous supercomputing to refer to systems that integrate low- and mid-range computing systems, advanced networks and remote high-end computers with the goal of enhancing the computational power accessible from local environments. Such systems promise to enable new applications in areas as diverse as smart instruments and collaborative environments. However, they also demand tools for transporting code between computers and for establishing flexible, dynamic communication structures. In this article, we propose that these requirements be satisfied by introducing Java classes that implement the global pointer and remote service request mechanisms defined by a communication library called Nexus. …