A measure of aesthetics that has been used in automated layout is described. The approach combines heuristic measures of attributes that degrade the aesthetic quality. The combination is nonlinear so that one bad aesthetic feature can harm the overall score. Example heuristic measures are described for the features of alignment regularity separation balance white-space fraction white-space free flow proportion uniformity and page security.

As those who have done it can attest, developing an undergraduate degree in software engineering is a daunting and challenging task, and there have been instances where a department has tried, but failed to get its program approved. A strong desire to develop a program in software engineering together with interested faculty may not be enough to build a credible degree, let alone a curriculum that will be approved by all the administrative and State organizations who may have a say in it .This panel brings together a group whose experience in developing software engineering degrees at their respective institutions may be helpful to those thinking about doing so. Each member of the group will describe his/her experiences in developing an undergraduate program in software engineering and address key issues and problems that should be considered in any such effort. There will also be ample opportunity for interaction among the participants.

Panel Summary For more than twenty years, the IEEE Computer Society has played a leading role in improving the professionalism of software engineers. Its activities include development of a large collection of software engineering standards, publication of many seminal software engineering journals, texts, and reference books, co-sponsorship of undergraduate software engineering curriculum and accreditation activities, and co-sponsorship of the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) project. In 1999, the Society launched an effort to certify the knowledge of practicing software engineers. This effort led to the development of the Society’s CSDP certification examination, which was given to a test group in 2001. The examination will be offered to the public through test centers around the world in Spring 2003. The Society has also encouraged the development of face-toface and online training opportunities for prospective test-takers. These opportunities will also be available in Spring 2003.

Agile software development methodologies claim to be superior for adapting to the changing needs of customers and projects and to the people on the team. As a result, these methodologies are steadily gaining interest and popularity in industry. Some examples of agile methodologies are Extreme Programming, Feature-Driven Development, Scrum, and Win-Win Spiral. Each of these processes comprises a set of practices, some of which are currently considered best practices and are consistent with what is taught in software engineering courses today. Other practices, however, are controversial and run contrary to the focus of most curricular materials. As educators, we must assess the academic and technical values of emerging technologies and, if convinced of their worthiness, we owe it to our students to integrate them into our curricula.

In the fall of 1996. The Rochester Institute of Technology admitted the first students to its new B.S. program in Software Engineering. The program, which evolved from elective sequences in computer science and computer engineering, is significant for several reasons. First, to the best of our knowledge, it is the only such program offered in the U.S. Second, the program is jointly supported by two colleges of RIT, each with a unique culture, perspective, and mission. Finally, our goal from the outset was to design a curriculum that could be eventually accredited as an engineering program. While the paper briefly outlines the rationale for developing a new, specialized program, the focus is primarily on how the curriculum was developed, what it comprises, and why it is structured the way it is. We hope that others contemplating or actively developing such a program will profit from our experiences.

In the fall of 1996, RIT admitted the first students to a new undergraduate program in software engineering. Our goal in creating the program was to provide for the education of a new type of engineer: the software engineer. This paper presents the rationale for developing such a program, the process we followed in its design, and an outline of the distinctive features it possesses.

The authors study the via assignment problem when vias are allowed to appear rowwise as well as columnwise. Previously they proved that the problem belongs to the class of NP-hard problems and therefore it is unlikely that polynomial-time algorithms exist for solving the problem. Two heuristics (HEU1 and HEU2) to solve the problem were proposed. HEU1 splits the nets before any routing is done while HEU2 assigns the nets alternately to via rows and via columns. Here they modify HEU2 so that the side of the board to which the nets are assigned first for connection is selected according to a desired ratio of board width to height.>

Previous studies of the single-row routing problem have been restricted to the minimization of the total number of horizontal tracks needed for the realization of a given set of nets. Therefore, it has been assumed that enough space exists between adjacent nodes to allow for the wiring. Due to this assumption, realizations obtained with previously proposed algorithms may require a large number of vertical tracks between adjacent nodes. In this paper, we study the single-row routing problem when the number of vertical tracks available between adjacent nodes is bounded by a positive integer called the crossover bound. We give some results concerning crossovers and prove that, for any given positive integer K, an instance can be constructed such that the vertical track requirement between adjacent nodes cannot be less than K. We develop a fast algorithm for the case when the number of horizontal tracks available as well as the number of vertical tracks available between adjacent nodes have been preset. We compare the performance of our algorithm to the performance of an algorithm (proposed in [6]) which is fast and does not consider the vertical track constraint. Our experiments show that, in all cases, the realizations found by our algorithm have the same street capacities as those obtained by the algorithm proposed in [6]. However, unlike the realizations found with the algorithm proposed in [6], the ones found by our algorithm have smaller crossover bounds. The computing time of our algorithm is, in general, no worse than the computing time of the algorithm proposed in [6].

The routing problem for Printed-Circuit Boards (PCB's) is crucial in the fabrication of today's digital systems. Traditionally, this problem has been divided into two main sub-problems: layer assignment and routing. Considering these two problems apart from each other may cause uneven wire distribution both among the wiring layers and within each layer. Uneven wire distribution among the wiring layers could increase the number of wiring surfaces required for the routing. Uneven wire distribution within a layer could result in an unfeasible routing. We propose a new approach to deal with the routing of PCB's in technologies which allow short vias. The proposed methodology considers the layer assignment and routing problems in a unified fashion. Based on some global information, our algorithm first estimates the initial number of layers required for the routing. It then determines an ordering in which nets should be considered during the layer assignment process. The results of our experiments show that our algorithm is of practical use.