James A. Whittaker, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Computer Science
Florida Institute of Technology
150 West University Boulevard
Melbourne, Florida 32901-6975
jw@cs.fit.edu
(407)674-7638

Visit the web site for my lab: The Center for Software Engineering Research. You can learn about what projects are going on, who's doing them and find out if there is any research you may be interested in.


Professional Interests

Personal Interests


Selected Publications


Personal Profile (some boring stuff that no one will want to read unless they really have time to kill)

I am a Louisville, Kentucky native. I was born in 1965 to a large Catholic family with whom I am still very close (in heart, not distance). Growing up I thought I'd be a professional athlete until I got old enough to admit that I was no better than mediocre at anything. I finally turned my love and talent for invention into a career as a scientist and teacher.

I went to a small private college in Louisville called Bellarmine College. Famous in the state of Kentucky but not very well known outside it. I paid my own tuition by working as a free lance programmer and system administrator for small and medium sized local businesses. In 1987 I got a BA in Computer Science. Just before I graduated I was hired by the FBI in Louisville as a system administrator. This was in 1987 and the FBI was just beginning to get computers in their field offices. At first the job was really cool and exciting. I spent my time writing code to automate what the FBI agents did manually. One application I wrote was to process bank records looking for fraudulent activity. Ever heard of "check kiting?" Well, it's kind of like writing bad checks to cover other bad checks and trying to cash in on it. It's illegal and that's what we were trying to stop.

It wasn't long before I got bored with the FBI. Not enough of the work involved coding and learning new things so I took the GRE and got accepted for graduate school at various places. I chose the University of Tennessee for all the wrong reasons: it was close to Smoky Mountains and bunch of good hiking, it wasn't too far from home (so my girlfriend would go with me) and it had some reputation for its CS program. In retrospect, it turned out to be a great decision but only because I met the mentor-of-a-lifetime there, not because UT is all that great.

My career at UT almost ended as soon as it began. My first semester there I decided not to get a Ph.D., but instead stop after the MS. You see I had this really hard AI course from a really great teacher and I worked my butt off on it. At the time it frustrated me to no end, but looking back, it was one of the best classes I ever had. I really feel a debt of gratitude to the professor. UT later denied that particular professor tenure and I have never forgiven them for that. He was the best teacher there and they let him go.

Anyway, I joined a software engineering research group led by Dr. Jesse Poore that studied Cleanroom Software Engineering. I got a chance to work with Dr. Harlan Mills which was really an opportunity. I became the tester of the group by default: the developers met on Saturday and I didn't like working on weekends (that was my time to spend with the woman who eventually became my wife).

We were developing a CASE tool to document Cleanroom specifications and I was testing it with a 200 by 200 matrix of inputs that allowed me to generate input sequences; essentially the matrix defined legal input orderings. I then wrote a little Ada program to traverse the matrix and generate test cases. It worked pretty well, I guess...it never really got much of a chance because the developers could never get the software to work! So much for our first Cleanroom experiment.

For my part though the project was a big success. The matrix idea had potential but more than a few flaws. As I began searching the literature on matrices looking for help, I found references to "transition matrices for Markov chains." I didn't know what a Markov chain was but Jesse directed me to another professor in our department, Dr. Mike Thomason, who used Markov chains extensively in his work with pattern analysis.

Finding and working with Mike was the turn-around in my UT career. All of the sudden I was enthusiastic about my research and about learning new theory and techniques. I learned everything I could about Markov chains from Mike and he learned what he could stomach about software engineering from me. It worked out really good and the result was that Mike became my co-advisor (along with Jesse Poore) and we worked closely for several years before I finally earned my Ph.D. in December of 1991. Mike remains one of the people who has most profoundly touched my life. I am happy to say that he and I are still very close friends.

Speaking of profoundly touching my life, I got married while I was in graduate school. My best friend, Sharon, and I married in 1989. We had our first child, Bailey Alexis, in January of 1994, and second, Shea Austin, in September of 1997.

After I graduated from UT, I went to work for Harlan Mills' company, Software Engineering Technology. Initially, the job was great, I taught software engineering classes all over the world and got to see my testing methods used in practice by some really first-class organizations like Microsoft, IBM and Ericsson. I had a good deal of time to discuss software engineering with lots of smart people and I learned a lot, especially from Harlan Mills and his successors Dick Cobb and Jesse Poore. But after a while the push for company growth took hold. I began to feel like just another consultant peddling just another methodology. I craved real work. Travel went from exciting to oppressive, projects from challenging to mundane. As the company grew, my enthusiasm shrank until it was gone. The experience was wonderful and I would not trade it for anything, but it was clearly time to move on to the next challenge.

I went into academe because of my love of teaching and the challenge of research. Plus, my past is blessed with some really inspiring professors who've have given me a deep respect for the profession and a blueprint for my own career. I stand among giants and I am awed.

I started at Florida Tech in August 1996. I chose Florida Tech because it seems to be headed in the right direction. They have an excellent faculty that actually care about being good teachers as well as good researchers; this is a very refreshing change from the bigger universities who habitually forget students. I am very happy to have ended up in a department that shares a common vision and who put their best into their work.


Enough introspection, "now for something completely different:"

Personal Ramblings (if you find this entertaining, then you need to get out more often)

"The Software Testing Commandments"

Reader Discretion Advised

Readers of this site who are unfamiliar with software testing ethos or uncomfortable around software testers may find the following material objectionable, immoral and/or disturbing. Well tough. Testing isn't for choir girls and altar boys. It is a demanding craft that requires of its practitioners: deviousness, a desire to cause harm and a general disdain for rules and regulations. Click the Back button to retreat to moral high ground.

So here are the commandments without interpretation. All my testing students should be able to perform the interpretation after taking my class. Each commandment represents good advice for testers. Can you interpret them?

1. Thou shalt pummel thy app with multitudes of input

2. Thou shalt covet thy neighbor's apps

3. Thou shalt seek thee out the wise oracle

4. Thou shalt not worship nonreproducible failures

5. Thou shalt honor thy model and automation

6. Thou shalt hold thy developers sins against them

7. Thou shalt revel in app murder (celebrate the BSOD)

8. Thou shalt keep holy the sabbath (release)

9. Thou shalt covet thy developer's source code

Figure this out for extra credit: Why are there only nine?

 

"Tester's Golden Rule"

Do unto others until they hate you

 

"On Trees and Manatees"

I had a dream the other night

The Manatees were driving the boat

I wonder what happens when rednecks are run over,

Do they sink or do they float?

I wish trees could wield knives, then they could go around carving their names in people. Seriously though, after years of tramping forests from the east coast of Florida to the Olympic peninsula in Washington state, I have become convinced that tree are sentient. It's a good thing for us that they don't walk though or we'd probably get our butts kicked. Imagine a couple of Redwoods (pun intended) who've had a bit too much to drink:

" Hey Piney, let's go cut down that city of humans."

"Oh I don't know Oakley, it's kind of nice the way it is...pretty lights and all that."

"Oh come on, I'm not talking about slaughter, I need the bones to build a new floor for my thicket."

"Ooooh, solid bone floors, that is to die for! But it seems ashamed to waste all those human just to make a floor."

"What's the big deal you human-hugger, they're just people!"

"Hey, what if we grind up the fleshy part for fertilizer? My roots just thrive on that stuff."

"I like it, full use of our natural resources...now that's conservation!"

 

"The Student"

[Camera slowly pans to a small, cluttered office. A recently young professor is hunkered over a machine that has several orders more capability than he is able to properly use (but his operating system requires it). He has the look of extreme concentration, easily mistaken for boredom or the fact that he was a teenager for far too many years. In walks "the student."]

"Doctor, I have a 68 average in your class and I want to know if that's an A?" [Professor's expression is similar to that of a parent who has just been told that their child is ugly.]

"Hmmm, well, ah." The professor retorts, never unprepared, but the student interrupts this stream of wisdom.

"You see sir, I planned to get an A in this class and all through the class, that plan has never changed. Also, may I say that I enjoyed this class very much and that I learned more than in most classes which I have gotten A's." [This long speech has given the professor the few moments he needs to formulate the inevitable analogy.]

"Do you ever watch baseball? Well, students are like batters. When they first step up to the plate they are starting fresh. What's in their minds before that first pitch? Home run, of course. But things don't always turn out that way. You see, as a student batter, you swung and missed my first pitch, a mighty swing granted, but you whiffed it big-time. Strike one. I think you can learn a lesson from what a batter does in this situation: they stop and take stock of the situation, perhaps give tug here, a scratch there and, of course, spit; then back up to the plate. Now the next pitch is received with a lot more caution. But in your situation, another clear strike. Perhaps you tugged when you should have scratched, or even tugged once too often, but the result is the same: you're two down, pissed off at the pitcher and worried about that home run. But did you learn anything from those first two strikes? Did they make you more capable of cranking the next one over the wall? Or, did they just make you want to hurl your bat at the pitcher, bitch at the umpire, or spit again? Let's look at the third pitch....hmmm....ball one. Well now your confidence is back up.You stared down a hard curve ball and resisted the impulse to swing. It's 1-2 and you feel invincible. But why? Did you forget those two strikes so quickly? Let's see, the fourth pitch is hard and fast but right down the middle: strike three bub, you're out. Now, what does the baseball player do? Turn to the umpire and say: "what's the chance that that last pitch was a homer?"

 

"On Minivans"

Why is it that when people have their second child they buy a minivan? "Convenience" they claim. I beg to differ. Minivans are the epitome of surrender. They make the statement: "you win kid, we give up...our life is yours." No one buys a minivan because it looks good or drives well or for its cargo room. Minivans are for one thing and one thing only: hauling rug-rats from here to there. Style: gone. Individuality: out the window. What's left is a couple who have thrown in the towel: "our life is over, we live to serve our kids." Will the kids grow up and appreciate it I wonder? Or will the scene be: "uh, mom could you park the minivan here...I'll walk the rest of the way to school."


DISCLAIMER: This page is for entertainment purposes only. If you find the views expressed herein objectionable, then they are fictitious. If you agree with these views and share them, then you may be liable for copyright infringement. To avoid unnecessary lawsuits, I encourage you to send me large sums of money. All forms of cash are acceptable, all checks must be cashed in the presence of my personal accountants, Guido and Nunzio (don't fret over the pinstriped suits).