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Fox, Christopher
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, Virginia
 
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Chris Fox started off as an undergraduate at Michigan State University studying mathematics, but got sidetracked into English literature, and then into philosophy. He ended up getting both BA and MA degrees in philosophy before becoming discouraged with the job market and switching to information science at Syracuse University. He graduated from Syracuse in 1982 with an MS in computer science and a Ph.D. in information studies.

Chris taught computer science for a few years at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, but thinking that industry might be more exciting, he took a job at Lockheed Dialog Information Services in Palo Alto, California. In 1985 he moved on to AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. Although AT&T had been broken up a few years before, Bell Laboratories was still a vibrant and exciting place through the 1980s, and Chris had the opportunity to work as a software product designer, user interface designer, programmer, tester, lead developer, and quality consultant on projects of great diversity, including a statistical quality control program, a prototype expert system that used image classification to obtain input, a prototype personal workstation GUI, and a long-distance salesperson salary compensation system. Chris left Bell Labs for about a year in 1990 to become the technical lead in a start-up company that attempted to develop and market an electronic patent search and retrieval system, but returned to Bell Labs when the company failed. These industrial experiences emphasized the importance of practical problems in software development, and software engineering has been Chris's main research interest ever since.

Bell Labs had changed quite a bit by the end of the 1980s and Chris left for good in 1992 for a faculty position in the computer science department at James Madison University. At JMU Chris had the opportunity to help develop curricula and teach in a fledgling interdisciplinary science program, which he did for about six years, before devoting his attention more exclusively to computer science. During his time at JMU Chris has served as the computer science department's undergraduate coordinator, graduate coordinator, and head, and has taught courses in software engineering and the core areas of computer science. He also occasionally sits in on a philosophy course.

Chris has published articles and book on information retrieval and software engineering, and is currently writing a software design textbook. He is raising two daughters in a bilingual household with his wife Zsuzsa, a native of Hungary. Chris enjoys reading science fiction and nineteenth century British novels, especially those by Charles Dickens.

 
 
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   The Go programming language
Donovan A., Kernighan B., Addison-Wesley Professional, Old Tappan, NJ, 2016. 400 pp.  Type: Book (978-0-134190-44-0)

In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published The C programming language [1], the first book about C and the definitive guide to the language for decades. Kernighan has now teamed up with Alan Donovan to write The Go ...

Jan 22 2016  
  Executable specifications with Scrum: a practical guide to agile requirements discovery
Cardinal M., Addison-Wesley Professional, Indianapolis, IN, 2013. 192 pp.  Type: Book (978-0-321784-13-1)

Agile methods were invented to deal with changing requirements, and they treat requirements very differently than traditional software engineering methods. This book brings together various means of eliciting, stating, validating, and ...

Jan 22 2014  
  SPARK: the proven approach to high integrity software
Barnes J., Altran Praxis, Bath, UK, 2012. 530 pp.  Type: Book (978-0-957290-50-1)

SPARK is a subset and extension of the Ada programming language, designed for developing and verifying highly reliable software. This book is a tutorial on SPARK 2005, the current but soon to be displaced version of the language....

Jul 26 2013  
   Object-oriented analysis and design
Ramnath S., Dathan B., Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated, New York, NY, 2011. 450 pp.  Type: Book

Some areas of computer science, such as operating systems, programming languages, and database systems, have achieved solid consensus about their topics and (largely) their pedagogy; textbooks in these areas reflect this consensus. The...

Dec 15 2011  
   Software modeling and design: UML, use cases, patterns, and software architectures
Gomaa H., Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2011. 592 pp.  Type: Book (978-0-521764-14-8)

With this book, Gomaa updates Designing concurrent, distributed, and real-time applications with UML [1], which was published more than 10 years ago. Both books present the collaborative object modeling and architectural design ...

Jun 28 2011  
  Practices for scaling lean & agile development: large, multisite, and offshore product development with large-scale Scrum
Larman C., Vodde B., Addison-Wesley Professional, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2010. 624 pp.  Type: Book (978-0-321636-40-9)

In 2009, Larman and Vodde published Scaling lean & agile development [1], an introduction to the theory underlying agile methods, particularly Scrum, with a special focus on large-scale software development. That book pr...

Aug 13 2010  
  Succeeding with agile: software development using Scrum
Cohn M., Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston, MA, 2009. 504 pp.  Type: Book (978-0-321579-36-2)

The agile approach is full of tensions and contradictions. For example, the first line of the agile manifesto states that the agile approach values “individuals and interactions over processes and tools” [1], yet ag...

Apr 14 2010  
   Scaling lean & agile development: thinking and organizational tools for large-scale Scrum
Larman C., Vodde B., Addison-Wesley Professional, 2008. 368 pp.  Type: Book (9780321480965)

Scrum is currently the most widely used agile method. Scrum features very short (one- to four-week) fixed-length development cycles; small, self-directed, cross-functional teams; development tasks chosen from a prioritized list of prod...

May 13 2009  
   A concise introduction to software engineering
Jalote P., Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated, 2008. 296 pp.  Type: Book (9781848003019)

I taught introductory software engineering 20 years ago, using a slim volume that provided an accessible overview of the entire field. Sommerville’s text [1], then in its second or third edition, has become, in ...

Nov 19 2008  
   Use case driven object modeling with UML: theory and practice
Rosenberg D., Stephens M., Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2007. 475 pp.  Type: Book (9781590597743), Reviews: (1 of 2)

Stephens and Rosenberg took extreme programming (XP) to task in their 2003 book [1]. Their latest book offers an alternative development methodology: the ICONIX process. In contrast to most agile methods, the ICONIX process has signifi...

Jul 24 2007  
 
 
 
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