COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

Association for Computing Machinery Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession

I M A G E C O U R T E S Y O F R S C . O R G / C H E M I S T R Y W O R L D

Departments

5 Letter from ACM’s Director of Information Systems Raising ACM’s Digital Library By Wayne Graves

6 Letters to the Editor Make Abstracts Communicate Results

7 Cerf’s Up

‘As We May Think’ By Vinton G. Cerf

8 Blog@ACM

Advice on Teaching CS, and the Learnability of Programming Languages Valerie Barr considers how attitude can impact teacher effectiveness, while Mark Guzdial suggests the ultimate focus in teaching programming languages should be on usability.

33 Calendar

92 Careers

Last Byte

96 Q&A

Object Lessons

The creator of the Eiffel programming language discusses his career in industry and academia, “Design by Contract,” and his views on Agile software development.

By Leah Hoffmann

News

13 Automating Organic Synthesis A machine that could create organic molecules on demand awaits appropriate software and analytical components. By Keith Kirkpatrick

16 Car Talk

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication is coming. Are we ready for it?

By Tom Geller

19 Python for Beginners

A survey found the language in use in introductory programming classes in the top U.S. computer science schools.

By Esther Shein

Viewpoints

22 Legally Speaking

Copyrightability of Java APIs Revisited A recent case challenges the long-standing view that application program interfaces are not protectable under copyright law.

By Pamela Samuelson

25 Broadening Participation

Reaching a Broader Population of Students through “Unplugged” Activities

Introducing children to fundamental computing concepts through Computer Science Unplugged.

By Thomas J. Cortina

28 The Profession of IT

A Technician Shortage

In our elation about rising CS enrollments, we are overlooking a growing shortage of computing technicians. Our education system is not responding to this need.

By Peter J. Denning and Edward E. Gordon

31 Computing Ethics

Humans in Computing: Growing Responsibilities for Researchers Considering the role of institutional review boards in computing research. By John Leslie King

34 Viewpoint

The Real Software Crisis: Repeatability as a Core Value

Sharing experiences running artifact evaluation committees for five major conferences.

By Shriram Krishnamurthi and Jan Vitek

37 Viewpoint

Why Did Computer Science Make a Hero Out of Turing? Comparing the legacy of Alan Turing in computer science with that of Carl Friedrich Gauss in mathematics. By Maarten Bullynck, Edgar G. Daylight, and Liesbeth De Mol

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