The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale – Timeless Patterns of Human Limitations

Author: Jorn Bettin

Through the lenses of evolutionary biology and cultural evolution, small groups of 20 to 100 people are the primary organisms within human society – in contrast to individuals, corporations, and nation states. The implications for our civilisation are profound. Humanity is experiencing a phase transition that is catalysed by a combination of new communication technologies, toxic levels of social inequalities, and existential crises.

It is time to put ubiquitous global digital connectivity to good use, to curate and share the lessons from marginalised perspectives, and to reflect critically on the human evolutionary journey and on the possibilities and limitations of human agency.

The journey of exponentially accelerating cultural evolution presented in this book covers several hundred thousand years, from the origins of humans right up to the latest significant developments in the early 21st century. Regardless of what route we choose, on this planet no one is in control. The force of life is distributed and decentralised, and it might be a good idea to organise and collaborate accordingly.

Becoming conscious of human cognitive limits and recognising that these limits are just as real, immutable, and relevant for our survival as the laws of physics may allow us to avoid the fate of earlier civilisations, and to embark on a path of radical energy descent.

To make the book widely available to members of the autistic community, you can download a copy of the book free of charge if you fill in the form on this page, to confirm that you openly identify as neurodivergent and agree for your identity to be published in a list of autistic and neurodivergent people on the AutCollab.org website.

Domain Engineering – Product Lines, Languages, and Conceptual Models

Authors: Iris Reinhartz-Berger, Arnon Sturm, Tony Clark, Sholom Cohen, Jorn Bettin

Domain Engineering is of considerable practical significance, as it provides methods and techniques that help reduce time-to-market, development costs, and project risks on one hand, and helps improve system quality and performance on a consistent basis on the other.

In this book, the editors present a collection of invited chapters from various fields related to domain engineering. The individual chapters present state-of-the-art research and are organized in three parts. The first part focuses on results that deal with domain engineering in software product lines. The second part describes how domain-specific languages are used to support the construction and deployment of domains. Finally, the third part presents contributions dealing with domain engineering within the field of conceptual modeling.

• The most comprehensive and up-to-date work on domain engineering.
• Covers all important technological aspects, including software product lines, domain-specific languages, and conceptual modeling.
• Introduces novel approaches and techniques, and includes a wealth of pointers for further research.

Model-Driven Software Development: Technology, Engineering, Management

Authors: Thomas Stahl, Markus Voelter, Jorn Bettin, Arno Hase, Simon Helsen

Model-Driven Software Development (MDSD) is currently a highly regarded development paradigm among developers and researchers. With the advent of OMG’s MDA and Microsoft’s Software Factories, the MDSD approach has moved to the centre of the programmer’s attention, becoming the focus of conferences such as OOPSLA, JAOO and OOP.

MDSD is about using domain-specific languages to create models that express application structure or behaviour in an efficient and domain-specific way. These models are subsequently transformed into executable code by a sequence of model transformations.

This practical guide for software architects and developers is peppered with practical examples and extensive case studies. International experts deliver:

• A comprehensive overview of MDSD and how it relates to industry standards such as MDA and Software Factories.
• Technical details on meta modeling, DSL construction, model-to-model and model-to-code transformations, and software architecture.
• Invaluable insight into the software development process, plus engineering issues such as versioning, testing and product line engineering.
• Essential management knowledge covering economic and organizational topics, from a global perspective

Management of the Object-Oriented Development Process

Editors: Liping Liu; Borislav Roussev, Authors: Jorn Bettin et al.

Managing Complexity with MDSD: This chapter addresses the question of how to successfully create durable and scalable software architectures that enable the underlying design intent of a system to survive over a period of many years, such that no accidental dependencies are introduced as part of further software development and maintenance. The answer involves looking beyond object-orientation and traditional iterative software development. In order to prevent long-term design degradation, and in order to efficiently execute software development in the large, the introduction of dependencies between components needs to be actively managed, relying on a set of guiding principles for component encapsulation and abstraction. The guiding principles required turn out to be a natural extension to the principles of design by contract, they have a direct impact on the modular structure of software source code, and they form a foundation for model-driven approaches to software development.

The MDA Journal: Model Driven Architecture Straight from the Masters

Authors: David Frankel, Jorn Bettin, Oliver Sims, Stephen Mellor, et al.

In these pages you will find the vital discussion of a young discipline by the developers, practitioners and theorists who are creating standards and products for this evolutionary revolution. While this isn’t a reference manual or even a technology guide, it’s an important way to quickly understand the issues involved in implementing an MDA approach. I leave you in the hands of several masters of the craft. Enjoy your own evolution! ― Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D. Chairman and CEO, Object Management Group, Inc