Category: Articles
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Teaching SE: from UML to Patterns
In teaching software engineering at Curtin Uni, we have long had a 2nd-year unit that dealt principally with the grandiosely-named Unified Modelling Language (UML), that diagrammatic language that promised to be software’s answer to the technical drawings of other engineering disciplines. I recall it as a student, when the various UML notations (each one allowing you…
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Expseudoanonymity
I’ve decided to drop the attempt at anonymity and put my actual name to what I write. Some readers of this blog already know who I am. For the rest, no, sadly I’m not Scott Morrison’s split personality, Clive Palmer’s secret robotic dinosaur, or a time-travelling, sapient descendant (employed as a short term foreign worker)…
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WA election rerun
It’s not decided yet, but the odds look good for a new WA senate election, to clear things up after the AEC’s recount discovered 1375 missing votes. (I gather from Antony Green that the AEC actually knows what these votes were, or at least how they were originally counted, but they can’t be used in the recount…
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Climate Policy and Democracy in 2013-14
Tim Dunlop argues that Labor, having lost the election, should yield to Tony Abbott’s right “to govern as he sees fit”, and help him repeal the carbon tax. According to Dunlop, the “norms of democratic governance” are at stake. I find his reasoning a bit simplistic, but I’ll get back to this. A range of new Senators…
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Fun with Senate GVT Data
As I learnt from the Poll Bludger, the Senate group voting tickets were released a few days ago. (The data is available in CSV form from the AEC: NSW, Vic, Qld, WA, SA, Tas, ACT, NT.) Group voting tickets (if you don’t know) are the way most voters choose to vote on the senate ballot…
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Are the Greens extreme?
Some personal context: at the time of writing, I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of a political party, nor have I campaigned for one (unless you include my writings on this blog, and if you do that you’d be equating mere opinion with political campaigning). I think and write independently of…
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To be a male feminist
I haven’t ranted in a rather long time, so here goes. A (male) friend of mine voiced an opinion recently that, surely, everyone ought to be a feminist. At least, I shall rephrase slightly in deference to those with the greatest experience on the subject, everyone ought to aspire to feminism. It is a perspective, after all, not…
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Denial in carbon politics
This is a follow-up to my previous post on Greg Hunt’s paradoxical lack of enthusiasm for discussing climate change policy. He’s very quiet on the Coalition’s “Direct Action” policy, and very loud on the Coalition’s promise to remove Labor’s carbon tax. (Highly suspicious, given that one is theoretically necessitated by the other.) But will the…
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If not the carbon tax, then what?
Greg Hunt, the Opposition’s spokesperson on Climate Action, is trying very hard to convince anyone who will listen that the Coalition can and will repeal Labor’s carbon tax if it wins government. He responds to a well-considered piece by David Forman on the political difficulties of doing so. I want to make two points about…
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Compulsory voting
I have a few things to say about compulsory voting, since scrapping it has been put on the table by Queensland state government. (Oh Queensland, what would we do without you?) I happen to be a fan of compulsory voting, not because it’s the status quo, nor simply because it’s “our duty” (although that is a…