Redacting results in reviews

Here’s a thought experiment: what if empirical software engineering papers were first reviewed with the results redacted? Once the reviewers had submitted the reviews of the redacted paper, they were then shown the full paper and did a full review. I wonder how much the final reviews would change in practice.

So, what happens if the programmer makes an error?

If you’re building tools for use by developers, especially novices, you need to ask yourself this question again and again, or they’re going to get mighty confused by the error messages. Via Hacker News.

Well-deserved

Nice to see Greg Wilson win a Sloan Foundation Grant to advance his Software Carpentry project. It’s an education project to teach much-needed software development skills to scientists.

Data proposal needs some love

I proposed a new Stack Exchange Q&A site, but so far it hasn’t garnered much interest. Am I the only one who is interested in random statistics but is too lazy to do the research to find them?

Tumbling

I threw up a tumblr site for non-software-related jetsam and flotsam.

Transition

Today is my last day at ISI. Tomorrow, I start at Nimbis Services.