Tutorial 7: Realistic Scheduling
ICSE's a Blast
Window on the World
Issue 0
ICSE is a Blast!
By Colin Paul Gloster (Dublin Central Univ. student WOW staffer)
Ever since I was a little boy (and I'm one of the student volunteers so that was less than two decades ago) I was big into space. I was seriously aiming to be an astronautical engineer instead of becoming a software engineer. A financial problem I only found out about close to the end of my secondary (high) school education proved too obstructive so I settled for the easy route…I’m reading computer science at university instead (I started programming in late primary school). Hopefully I’ll be able to work in astronautics by developing software for that arena but I’m not insisting on going that route.
Imagine my surprise to meet so many people here at ICSE who have worked in the field of space. For a start there are three of my co-workers on WOW: one who had just a little brush with it some time ago and then the other two who are Ada advocates and one of them a fellow member to the ACM’s SIGAda. Joining SIGAda was part of my plan to become an aerospace software developer – what?, you think that in a Java/C++ world I’ll get much Fortran; C; and Ada exposure in university! The other Ada advocate on the WOW team worked on software to do with satellites. I’m not saying that ICSE is full of aerospace developers this year but I met others outside of the newsletter staff too. There was someone who had been involved with NASA in the past and someone else who was once involved with a university research project utilizing a satellite. There are also other delegates and speakers around from DERA; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; NASA/GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center); NASA Ames Research Center; Serco; Lockheed Martin and Aerospatiale Matra Airbus. I may attend a future ICSE as a space professional and my job for between semesters with C/C++ scripts for satellite communications I’ll be starting the Monday after the conference is the way to go about that.
Designer
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Caroline Kehoe