Tushar Sharma

How to Filter GitHub Repositories for Your MSR Paper

2022-08-08T08:00:00-04:00

A Mining Software Repository (MSR) study often involves identifying a set of GitHub repositories based on a set of filters. An MSR study uses the obtained repositories as the subject system to mine a specific aspect (for example, source code, number of issues, or other repository metrics). How you define your sampling criteria relates to the sampling theory, and what you do with your subject systems strongly relates to the problem you are solving and your solution. The step in between these two steps, i.e., identify and download GitHub repositories, is where the focus of this post is.

Let's say you would like to identify repositories with the following constraints:

the primary programming language should be Java,
must have modified in the last year at least once (to avoid analyzing inactive repositories),
must have more than 10,000 lines of code,
must have at least ten stars, and
must have good code quality (yes, it is pretty vague; let's hold on for now).

GHTorrent significantly made it easier to work on this problem; especially when your criteria involve metadata (such as the number of stars) about the repositories, you can write SQL query to obtain a set of repositories. However, you either need to have a local installation of the GHTorrent database or have access to the APIs offered by the GHTorrent platform. Another issue is that you may not get up-to-date information depending on when the platform crawled GitHub.

As the MSR community grew, the community started striving to filter repositories based on the repositories' quality. RepoReapers was an attempt to collect quality aspects (such as documentation, architecture, unit test, license, and issues). Again, the dataset is prone to provide obsolete information due to its static nature.

GitHub search offered by the SEART lab also provides an elegant interface to search GitHub repositories. You may specify your search criteria using numerous parameters supported by GitHub's advanced search.

Then enters GitHub GraphQL API. You can query GitHub directly using the API and get the filtered set of repositories. The information is up-to-date information. However, there is a catch. MSR researchers want thousands of repositories as their subject system. To do that, they need to search using quite broad criteria. Even if you use a GitHub API token to search, the search results are often too big to complete in one shot, and soon you will consume your API limit.

To overcome the above challenge, you may use searchgithubrepo package. With this package, you only need to call one method searchrepo with all the parameters (such as the minimum number of stars and programming language). The package will create a text file containing all the GitHub repositories modified on or after the specified start date and satisfying other conditions.

The above package solves the problem partially. GitHub does not support searching based on lines of code in a repository. Hence, we need to rely on another source for this information. Another issue is that we would not like to select poor-quality repositories. It is partially avoided by relying on GitHub stars but is not foolproof.

To solve both issues, we can use QScored. QScored is an open platform where code quality information (smells and metrics) of more than 200 thousand open-source repositories is available. QScored assigns a weighted quality score based on the detected smells at various granularities (the higher the score, the poorer the quality). QScored offers search APIs. The below program takes the file generated using the searchgithubrepo package and checks the size of the project in terms of lines of code and the quality score.

That's it for now. Happy mining :)

Explore Halifax

2022-07-27T09:00:00-04:00

CSCI 3130 (Software Engineering) is one of the courses that I (Tushar Sharma) teach at Dalhousie University. As a part of the course, I took a lecture on git and GitHub in the beginning of the course. After the session, I gave the students an assignment - to contribute to a GitHub repository, i.e., "Explore Halifax". In the assignment, each student had to write about the city they live in. My primary goal was to help them understand how to use git and GitHub (since they are supposed to contribute to a single file in the repository). As a (pleasant) side effect, the assignment has prepared a comprehensive list of things to do/see/experience in Halifax, NS, Canada.

You may find the open-source repository here; you are welcome to contribute more. Thanks to all students and contributors who made this list awesome.

Table of contents

Historical places
Tourist spots
Art galleries
Museums
Parks
Beaches
Tours
Sports & competitions
Hikes
Gyms
Live Music
Entertainment
Events
Night Clubs
Restaurants
- Indian
- Chinese
- Mediterranean
- Japnese and Korean
- Italian
- Formal
- Fast food
- Others
Coffee and tea
Wineries and bars
Dessert Shops
Government services
Buildings
Libraries
Supermarkets
Shopping Centers
Farmers Markets
Academic institutions
Learning opportunities
Transportation

Historical places

Citadel Hill

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There are a lot of Historical Places to visit in Halifax. The Citadel Hill tops the list. It is a hill that has a harbor underneath itself. At Citadel Hill, visitors can explore the history of the fortress and the soldiers stationed there as well as touch on a piece of Halifax's military history. More information about it could be found here, here, and here.

Point Pleasant park

Point Pleasant park has a few military historical sites and a nice Atlantic ocean view.

York Redoubt

York Redoubt is an old military defense base. The site offers a fabulous view of Halifax.

Canadian Forces Base

Canadian Forces Base (CFB) is one of the largest Canadian military bases and home to Canada's East Coast Navy. It was founded in 1906. Now Canadian Forces Base supports Maritime Forces Atlantic and allocated lodger units with administrative, logistics, information technology, port operations and emergency services.

Dingle Tower

Dingle Tower was created to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the government in Nova Scotia. The tower was built from 1908-1912. You can get a nice view of the Northwest Arm from the top of the tower.

Fairview Lawn Cemetery

Fairview Lawn Cemetery located at 3720 Windsor St is a cemetery best known for being the final resting place of 121 victims from the sinking of the Titanic. The cemetery also contains 29 war graves of Commonwealth service personnel.

Tourist spots

Victoria Park

Victoria Park is a small park that seems like not much at first glance. However, this park is home to a lot of wildlife with a special abundance of pigeons. If you are ever bored and looking for a fun time, visit the Dollarama down the street on the spring garden and pick up a bag of bird seed, and you will make many friends in this park.

Petit Passage Whale Watching

Petit Passage Whale Watching is a place to watch real whales.

George's Island

George's Island This national park is a quaint little island in the Halifax harbor. Accessible only by boat (or harbor hopper!), this island is rich in history and biodiversity as it is reportedly infested with snakes!

Halifax Town Clock

Halifax Town Clock is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the historic urban core of Halifax. Situated nearby Citadel Hill, tourists love to go to the Town Clock to get a better view of the landscape of downtown Halifax.

Peggy's Cove

Peggy's Cove Lighthouse Peggy's Cove Lighthouse, also known as Peggy's Point Lighthouse, is one of Nova Scotia's most well-known lighthouses and may be the most photographed in Canada. (from Nova Scotia website)

Halifax Waterfront

Image: Tushar Sharma

Halifax Waterfront is a popular tourist attraction spot. The waterfront contains a boardwalk that stretches several kilometers. This location also houses several popular restaurants and iconic structures like 'The Wave'.

Art galleries

Art gallery of Nova Scotia

The Art gallery of Nova Scotia, with locations in downtown Halifax and Yarmouth, is the largest art museum in Atlantic Canada.

Studio 21

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Studio 21 is an art studio located at 5431 Doyle St #102 featuring Canadian artists, with half of the artists being from the Atlantic region. The exhibitions change monthly and have shipping available worldwide.

Museums

Thomas Mcculloch Museum

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Though Halifax has many museums, one of the most accessible museums is within Dalhousie University. It is called Thomas Mcculloch Museum. This museum resides in the Department of Biology in the Life Science Building at Dalhousie. This museum has one of the biggest collections of birds, beetles, butterflies, moths, fishes, and mushroom species. One of the most interesting facts about the museum is that it houses the vertebrate piece of Indian whale and the museum itself, followed by Aquatron. More information about the museum could be found here.

The Canadian museum of immigration

Pier 21 is a National Historic site and is the site of Atlantic Canada's only national museum. The Canadian museum of immigration is located next to the seaport farmers market. The museum details Halifax's long history as a landing port for immigrants.

Discovery Centre

Discovery Centre is a fun and interactive science museum in Halifax.

Museum of Natural History

Museum of Natural History a kind of science it can help people know the natural history

Maritime Museum of the Atlantic

Martime Museum of the Atlantic offers maritime history deeply interwoven into the heart of Halifax and Nova Scotia. Explore everything from how the Mi'kmaw peoples interacted with the ocean, the days of sailing, to WW1 and WW2 era Canadian naval history. Has the world's most important wooden Titanic artifacts.

Beyond Van Gogh Halifax

Beyond Van Gogh Halifax is an art museum that is truly an immersive experience. The atmosphere causes you to feel like you have ventured directly into a Van Gogh painting. If you are artistic, you will love this as the floors, ceilings, and walls transform into art.

Parks

Africville Park

Africville Park used to be the location of an African Nova Scotian neighborhood before it was demolished for urban renewal. It now hosts a community park, including a mountain biking circuit for all to enjoy.

Point Pleasant Park

It is a nice park at the South End (near the port). At this park, people can walk， ride and feel the sea breeze and nature, and there are several small fortresses hidden in the woods; this is a great place to relax in your free time.

Admiral Cove Park

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Admiral Cove Park is a beautiful hidden spot in Bedford Halifax with an amazing view and many trails in the mountains for hiking.

Fort Needham Park

Fort Needham Park is a newly renovated park in the historic Hydrostone neighborhood of North End Halifax. This park is dedicated to the lives lost in the Halifax Explosion of 1917. It boasts a state-of-the-art playground for children of all ages.

Halifax Common

Halifax Common is a beautiful urban park located in the center of Halifax. If you're visiting in the winter, check out the outdoor skating rink at Emera Oval.

Long Lake Provincial Park

Long Lake Provincial Park is a beautiful park located on the outskirts of Halifax. This park is famous for its long trail where people go on walking usually. It's a great place to go canoeing. It's located on the western side of Halifax on Dunbrack street. If you want to stroll, do an adventurous hike, paddle, bike ride, or swim, then this is the place for you.

DeWolf Park

DeWolf Park is a wonderful place for a walk! People walk along the waterfront and enjoy the sites. There is a nice park area if you have children; they usually have fun events in the summer months.

Horseshoe Island Park

Horseshoe Island Park is on 6939 Upper Grove, Halifax, NS B3H 2M6. It is a small park and has some small benches. You can enjoy the beautiful view of sunrise and sunset here.

Public Gardens

This beautiful park is home to a wide variety of plant life, statues, many ducks, and even a tiny scale model of the Titanic floating in a pond. It also has decent Wi-Fi!

Hail Pond Park

Hail Pond Park is 3.6 km away from Dalhousie University. It is a beautiful place for a morning walk or to take your dog a walk.

Oakfield park

Oakfield park is a very popular park located on Shubenacadie Grand, which features a small beach and picnic area.

Shubie Park

If you are visiting Dartmouth Crossing and you want some fresh air, Shubie Park might be the place for you. Not only can you get some fresh air, but you also walk along the Shubenacadie Canal, and it cannot get better than this. Also, expect to see some wild animals as well!

Belchers Marsh Park

Belchers Marsh Park is on Parkland Dr. A beautiful place to take a morning walk or walk dogs. A quiet place to do meditations and relax. It gives a feeling of getting out of the city.

Westmount School Playground and Splash Pad

Westmount School Playground and Splash Pad is right across the street from the Halifax Shopping Centre, so easy to access by public transport or you could combine a trip to the mall with some time on the playground.

Peace and Friendship Park

Peace and friendship park is located right in front of the Westin Hotel in the South End of Halifax. If you are looking for a garden to go for jogging, it is a suitable place.

Oakland Road Park

Oakland Road Park is a small park in Halifax's South End. It has a beautiful dock with pretty sunset and lake views; it is a nice and calm getaway from the city while it is about 5 mins of walk from campus.

Victoria Park

Victoria Park is not big, but it is a good place to rest. Pigeons often gather under the statue, and there are fountains in the summer. It's a great place to take pictures.

Frog Pond Park

Frog Pond Park is a small park with a 1.4km trail surrounding a pond. This is a good place to walk around and enjoy the wildlife culminating at the pond, such as ducks, chipmunks, and frogs.

Beaches

Rainbow Haven Beach

A decent beach nearby Halifax

Dingle Beach

Dingle Beach - Sir Sanford Fleming Park is a 95-acre park with four natural habitats (woodlands, heath barren, salt water and pond; please do not feed the waterfowl), walking trails, the Dingle Tower with bronze lions at the foot, a sandy beach (unsupervised swimming), a wharf and a boat launch.

Carters Beach

Carters Beach is a beautiful beach located in Port Mouton, Nova Scotia, only a 2-hour drive from Halifax to the location worth the drive place is trash free water is transparent. Crystal blue feels like you are on an island and does not feel like Nova Scotia at all.

Clam Harbour Beach Provincial Park

Clam Harbour Beach Provincial Park is a long white sand beach with a unique shallow tide stream that often means warmer water for swimmers.

Lawrencetown Beach Provincial Park

It offers a long coastline. The weather here could be very windy; check before you go.

Kinsmen First Lake Beach

Kinsmen First Lake Beach is located in Kinsmen Park, 71 First Lake Drive. People can play fireworks on New Year's Day or the Spring Festival on that beach with enough light around.

Black Rock Beach

Black Rock Beach is at Point Pleasant Park on Sailors Memorial Way. We can walk around and feel the sea breeze. Google Map Link

Chocolate Lake Beach

Chocolate Lake Beach is an ideal beach resort to drive to with friends or family for a swim on a hot summer day, and it's only a 5-minute drive from the city center.

Conrad's Beach

Conrad's Beach is a perfect place to watch the sunset with your friends. Or to take a nice walk, the water is a little brisk and usually only gets warm around August.

Crystal Crescent Beach

Crystal Crescent Beach has three white-sand beaches near the mouth of Halifax Harbor. Great place to go on a sunny day.

Queensland Beach

Queensland Beach is a bit further from the heart of the city, but well worth it. Make a trip to Queensland with family and friends on a hot summer day. This beach is supervised but becomes packed with people very quickly!

Williams Lake Beach

Williams Lake Beach is east of the main Turtle Mounta in Provincial Park. It is well-known for its stocked waters, producing great catches of rainbow trout over the years.

Tours

Harbour Hopper

Harbour Hopper Located on the iconic waterfront, the 55-minute number #1 boat tour in Halifax operates between May->October.

Tall Ship Silva

Tall Ship Silva This is a great option to get out on the Halifax harbor and see the city from a different perspective. You can also enjoy a beverage while you take in the sights and are shown the landmarks of Halifax.

Sports & competitions

Ski Wentworth

Ski Wentworth This is a great ski hill located about an hour and a half north of Halifax. It is close to the town of Truro and offers many different types of trails and riding conditions.

Ontree Park

Ontree Park is a place to have outdoor activities in the woods.

Ski Martock

Ski Martock It is my favorite place to go in winter; you can choose to ski or snowboard here; the experience is amazing!

Emera Oval

Emera Oval is a public outdoor skating surface. We can do in-line skating, cycling, and skateboarding in the summer and ice skating in the winter.

Seven Bays Bouldering

Seven Bays is an indoor bouldering rock climbing gym with an attached cafe and sitting area. Bouldering is the style of rock climbing where you don't attach yourself to the wall with a harness and only climb about 20 feet up. It has a chill vibe, and the rock climbing routes range in difficulty from beginner to expert.

Halifax Wanderers Stadium/Grounds

Halifax Wanderers Stadium/Grounds Located in downtown Halifax, besides the Halifax Public Gardens, this small stadium is home to the Halifax Wanderers soccer team.

East Coast Surf School

East Coast Surf School is a great way to get into surfing. They give daily surf lessons at Lawrencetown beach and offer rentals if you like to surf but don't have the gear. Surfing is a cool and fun summer activity to try with friends or family.

Halifax Junior Bengal Lancers

Halifax Junior Bengal Lancers is a non-profit horseback riding school with youth and adult programs. Located in the center of downtown Halifax, Lancers is a great place to visit to watch horseback riding right in the city.

Hikes

MacCormack's Beach Provincial Park

MacCormacks Beach Provincial Park — a trial near fisherman's cove is located on 1641 Shore Rd. It is not a long trail, fitting for short walking and afternoon sunshine. The Atlantic Ocean is beside you, while the seagulls are constantly flying over your head.

Duncans Cove

Duncans Cove is a seaside hike along the coastline just south of the Halifax harbor. It connects to two old bunkers and winds along the rocky shoreline for about 5km.

Heart Rock

Heart Rock / Collpitt Lake Trails Large Wilderness Park, Volunteer Run. These trails are mainly for Mountain Bikers.

Sir Sandford Fleming Park Trail

Sir Sandford Fleming Park Trail is a short hike that consists of a waterfront boardwalk and forested nature trails. The park also connects to the nearby frog pond trail.

Chain of Lakes Trail

Chain of Lakes Trail is an easy 7.3 km trail passing by multiple lakes in and around Halifax. The trail begins on Joseph Howe Dr, across from the Atlantic Superstore, and ends on Lakeside Park Dr at the entrance of the Beechville Lakeside Timberlea trail.

Hobsons Lake Trail

Hobsons Lake Trail is about a 20-minute drive from downtown Halifax and is a great outdoor area with lots of rugged trails for adventure lovers to explore.

Hemlock Ravine Park

Hemlock Ravine Park Located on Bedford highway, this park contains a unique heart-shaped pond along with a variety of trails surrounding it

Polly's Cove

Polly's Cove is a park with 3.9km of marked trails just 2km away from the world-famous Peggy's Cove.

Long Lake

Long Lake is a large provincial park with many trails surrounding Long Lake, only a 15-minute drive from downtown!

Salt Marsh Trail

Salt Marsh Trail A trail that was previously a railway. About 9km long and is relatively flat.

Shaw Wilderness Park

Shaw Wilderness Park is a great hiking ground to explore the landscape of Nova Scotia. There is a short 3km trail which allows you to explore nature and see amazing views.

Scotsbay

Scotsbay If you like hiking, Scotsbay is a place that I recommend to you; you can hike near the beach for about 4 hours long. There will be an amazing view at the end of the hiking trip.

Admirals Cove

Admirals Cove is a pretty easy hike in Bedford with some stunning views. It's most famous for "Eagles Rock" which is bolder on top of a cliff overlooking the Bedford Basin. It's a great place to hang out when no one else is around.

Pollets Cove

Pollets Cove Located on the Cabot trail. Heard many good things about this trail. Great View, and you can spot wild horses as well.

Gyms

GoodLife Fitness

Goodlife Fitness is one of my favorite places to go. It's at 5657 Spring Garden Rd. It has good fitness equipment but is not cheap if you need a coach.

Dalplex

Dalplex, situated just across the Studley Campus of Dalhousie University, is one of the more popular gyms in central Halifax. Dalplex consists of pools, courts, gym equipment, and much more but is often busy and requires membership for access.

YMCA Health & Fitness

YMCA HEALTH & FITNESS there is only one location in Halifax for YMCA HEALTH & FITNESS. It is a mixed gym for males and females, open Wednesday-Friday from 5:45 AM- 10 PM, located at 5640 Sackville Street, Halifax NS B3J 1L2. Many people recommended it, and they say the staff is very friendly and nice feel welcoming.

House of eights

House of eights a place to dance and relax, make friends with the same interests

Canada Games Centre

Canada Games Centre is a sports and recreation center near Clayton Park in Halifax. The center was built for the 2011 Canada Games in Halifax. It is now a recreational facility, offering a pool with several aquatics programs, a running track, and a gym. One of the most impressive things about the building has to be the water slide which starts inside the building and travels outside for a few loops before re-entering the building properly.

Fit4Less

Fit4Less has multiple locations around the HRM. An affordable alternative to Goodlife starting at just 6.99 every two weeks.

30 Minute Hit

30 Minute Hit is a great gym, especially for those that enjoy boxing. You could get an amazing workout here, plus great staff.

Impact Fitness

Impact Fitness Small but a great gym, comes with a variety of weights and equipment, staff are friendly most of the time :)

Queensbury Rules Boxing

Queensbury Rules Boxing is a gym with various classes and an option for sparring for boxers at every level. Trials start at $25 + tax for two weeks, and a student discount is also offered when purchasing a membership.

Titans MMA

Titans MMA is the best MMA gym in Halifax. They host a variety of classes for athletes of different levels in MMA, BJJ, boxing, and kickboxing.

JBTC - Nova Scotia Junior Badminton Training Center

JBTC - Nova Scotia Junior Badminton Training Center 10,000 sqft of professional facilities dedicated to badminton training and competition. The address is 200 Bluewater Rd Bedford NS, B4B1G9.

Live Music

Durty Nelly's

Durty Nelly's is a classic Irish pub with live music seven nights a week! With a great selection of food & drinks, it is a must-visit place in Halifax.

The Old Triangle Irish Alehouse

The Old Triangle Irish Alehouse The Celtic Heart of the Maritimes! Experience the best Irish cuisine and drink Halifax offers here on 5136 Prince St. Enjoy some of the greatest live music Nova Scotia artists have!

Split Crow Pub

Split Crow Pub The Split Crow Pub is proud to be 'Nova Scotia's Original Tavern' and continues to serve locals and travelers worldwide. A welcoming smile, generous mugs of grog, fantastic food, and, of course, toe-tapping music welcomes you at the Split Crow Pub. Great live music and $2.50 beers during power hour!

Dalhousie Arts Centre

Dalhousie Arts Centre The Dalhousie Arts Centre hosts shows/concerts that are truly breathtaking. I've been lucky enough to go to a show by the legendary guitarist Tommy Emmanuel and a show by the Symphony Nova Scotia playing pieces by my favorite classical composer, Maurice Ravel. They also do other forms of live media.

Entertainment

Captured Escape Rooms

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Captured Escape Rooms are designed for intense participation from the group trying to escape. It's perfect for team building experience!

Bára Whitewater Rafting

Bára Whitewater Rafting is the closest rafting location to Halifax for a particularly exciting experience.

Red Bar

Red Bar is a karaoke located at 5680 Spring Garden Rd. You can not only show your beautiful voice there but also enjoy some live music by various bands.

Trapped Halifax

Trapped Halifax is a similar establishment located on Barrington St, offering a variety of escape rooms for groups to attempt.

Propeller Arcade

Propeller Arcade A retro arcade with many pinball machines, ski balls, and other arcade cabinets located in the lower level of Propeller Brewing Company's Gottingen Street taproom.

Scotiabank Theatre Halifax

Scotiabank Theatre Halifax is the only theatre with IMAX in Halifax; it has comfortable chairs and excellent quality visuals and sounds.

Yuk Yuk's

Yuk Yuk's is a local comedy club and an excellent place to go for a laugh!

Nova Tactical

Nova Tactical is a good place to experience the joy of shooting. The service includes archery ranges, airsoft ranges, and gun ranges; you also can buy firearms and fishing tools.

Halifax Ghost Walk

Halifax Ghost Walk Experience the haunted history of Halifax by attending the Halifax Ghost Walk tour located at The Old Town Clock on Brunswick Street. Learn about the thrilling events of Halifax's chilling run-ins with pirates, ghost tales, and eerie happenings on this journey through the city!

Get Air Trampoline Park

Get Air Trampoline Park is a great place for kids and adults; cheap and very interesting. Great place to have activities indoors when the weather isn't sunny.

The Comedy Cove

The Comedy Cove local stand-up artists trying to make you laugh. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but fair warning – don't come if you are easily offended.

Mersey Road Paintball

Mersey Road Paintball is a great opportunity to enjoy simulated combat for sport. The field offers walk-on options for new players where they can rent out gear and purchase paintballs on site. Mersey Road contains a mix of wooded areas and civilian-style structures.

The Deck Box

The Deck Box is a game store for trading card games, board games, and video games, including but not limited to Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-oh, Dungeons, and Dragons, etc. Deck Box also provides a place and space to play card games and air conditioning, which is a good place for trading card game lovers to meet and communicate offline.

Neptune Theatre

Neptune Theatre is a wonderful theatre located on Argyle Street. Neptune is a great place to watch live performances such as plays, musicals, and concerts.

Scotiabank Centre

The Scotiabank Centre is the largest facility in Atlantic Canada. Home to the hockey team, the Halifax Mooseheads, and the Halifax Thunderbirds lacrosse team, this multi-purpose arena hosts sports games, concerts, and restaurants.

Bowlarama

Bowlarama is a fun place to visit with family and friends. It contains an arcade, bowling alleys, a bar, and food and drinks, so you can easily spend a whole day.

Playdium

Playdium is a fun place with a vast assortment of arcade-style games, ride-on, VR games, and bowling lanes. It also has an in-house restaurant which is pretty decent—an excellent place to visit over the weekend with family and friends.

Casino Nova Scotia

Casino Nova Scotia is the most famous casino in NS province and the staff are very friendly. And they serve a very delicious buffet. The environment in that place is awesome, and it is also very close to the sea.

Parklane Theater

Parklane Theater Parklane theater is located at 5657 Spring Garden Road. You can watch screenings of the latest Hollywood films, plus new independent releases.

Halifax Wanderers

Halifax Wanderers is a football/soccer team that takes part in the Canadian Premier League, and the supporters come and watch the match to support their team and have a good time

Events

Baisakhi- in Halifax is one of the events organized by Utsav at Waterfront every year. It is a lot of fun with music, different Indian cuisines, and fun-loving folks!

Halifax Burger Bash

Halifax Burger Bash takes place every year from April 28 to May 7. During that time, Halifax restaurants will sell their creative burgers (more than 130, priced at $7 or more) and donate the proceeds from each burger to Feed Nova Scotia. If you're interested in burgers, don't miss it.

East Coast Kite Festival

East Coast Kite Festival is a non-alcoholic, family and kid-friendly event. You can come and enjoy your weekend with kites at Citadel Hill. Their team has over 20 new big kites to display, including new 3D kites!

The Busker Festival

The Busker Festival is an annual festival in Halifax showcasing the many diverse talents of busking performers from around the world. The festival occurs in the summer and is a wonderful way to spend some time on the Halifax Waterfront.

Halifax Jazz Festival

Halifax Jazz Festival Designated a Hallmark Event by the Halifax Regional Municipality, the Halifax Jazz Festival attracts up to 65,000 visitors, involves 400 volunteers, and employs over 350 local musicians. The Halifax Jazz Festival will take place July 13-17, 2022.

Halifax Color Festival

Halifax Color Festival is an annual event where people dance and play with colors. It is open to people of all ages. Food trucks are usually available if you want to grab something to eat.

Night Clubs

The Dome

The Dome Known by many as "Home", the Dome is a staple nightclub in downtown Halifax. A must-see for any dance enthusiast or audiophile looking for a thoroughly mediocre experience.

The Seahorse Tavern

The Seahorse Tavern is a hotspot for live music and some of the best parties in the city.

Pacifico

Pacifico Located on George Street in the heart of downtown, Pacifico is famous among locals and visitors for its incredible live Jazz nights on Thursdays.

Midtown-Boomers Tavern

Midtown-Boomers Tavern The Midtown Tavern & Lounge is located in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia, directly across from the Dome / Cheers nightclub. Offering late-night beverages and drink specials daily.

The Den

The Den The Den is a nightclub with arguably one of the best Music in Halifax. With a great atmosphere and diverse group of people, it is one of the best places to be on a Friday night.

Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek Hide and seek is a nightclub in downtown Halifax. It has a calm and chill atmosphere with banging beats and is also connected to the Loft nightclub, making it so that you pay one price for two nightclubs.

Restaurants

Indian

Rasa

Rasa:Flavours-of-India Rasa is a fine dining Indian cuisine restaurant. It is famous for its affordable choices in the main course with no compromise in providing authentic Indian flavors.

Adda Indian Eatery

Adda Indian Eatery is located in Spring Garden Place. This restaurant is one of the best Indian restaurants with the vibes of India and food to offer from all parts of India. If you feel away from home as an Indian, this is a place you shall surely go to and eat food.

Masala Delight

Masala Delight It's a great place for Indian cuisine, especially south Indian. They have one of the best dosas in Halifax.

Tawa Grill

Tawa Grill makes classic Indian cuisine with great portions and taste for reasonable pricing. Its ambiance makes for a very romantic date spot after evening, and the staff is super nice. They had a daytime lunch buffet for $14, but they, unfortunately, don't have it anymore.

Chinese

New Panda Buffet

New Panda Buffet It's a buffet restaurant with Chinese dishes, Japanese dishes and some Korean dishes. The music in this restaurant is also very unique, all of which is Classical Chinese tunes. This restaurant is cheap; you can eat all you want for $15.

9+nine

9+nine is a place to have authentic Chinese food.

Fan's Chinese Restaurant

Fan's Chinese Restaurant A Chinese restaurant on Windmill Road in Dartmouth serving dim sum, hotpot, and other dishes. The best dim sum I've had in HRM with lots of selection.

Xiaoyu Homestyle Noodle

Xiaoyu Homestyle Noodle is an authentic Chinese restaurant. You can get some real Chinese-style noodles here. There is some spicy food.

Happy Veal Hot Pot

Happy Veal Hot Pot This is an excellent Chinese restaurant; I often order their food on the takeaway platform. The taste is also very fragrant. The price is also very good.

Shanxi Paomo

Shanxi Paomo This is a great Chinese restaurant in Quinpool, the Roujiamo (kind of like a Chinese burger) and Liangpi (something like cold rice noodles) taste amazing, and the price is not high!

Jean's Chinese restaurant

Jean's Chinese restaurant has many delicious Chinese food items; you can order food on the official website or go to the store to taste it at 5972 Spring Garden Rd.

Friend's Chinese

Friend's Chinese restaurants is a Chinese restaurant which is populator in Chinese students. This restaurant also offers takeaway service.

Qiu Brothers Dumplings

Qiu Brothers Dumplings is at 1335 Barring Street. Same as the restaurant name, there have some delicious Chinese-style Dumplings. Otherwise, there also have some other Chinese food. Google Map

Mediterranean

Mezza Lacewood

This Mezza is the busiest among the Mezza in Halifax. It is at the hotspot of lacewood beside many other food stores. It is also Halal, which draws a lot of attention from Muslim customers.

Bakeaway

Bakeaway Bakeaway is a Middle-Eastern cuisine that contains a lot of the most famous foods in the Arab world. It makes the best Middle-Eastern dishes in Halifax. They offer dishes such as Falafel wraps, Shawarma, Vine leaves.

902 restaurant & catering

902 restaurant & catering 902 restaurant & catering is a Middle Eastern restaurant that makes Middle-Eastern Lunch and dinner meals such as Kebabs, Lamb Shank, Roasted chicken, Traditional Dishes, Fried Chicken, Shawarma, Hummus, Wraps, Burgers, it is located at spring garden at 1579 Dresden Row, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J 2K4

Chef Abod Cafe & Catering

Chef Abod Cafe & Catering is a Middle Eastern restaurant known for various dishes, including their Kabsa, Mandi, and Shawarma dishes. They are located on 3217 Kempt Road and offer Dine-in, Delivery, Pick-Up, and catering services.

Japnese and Korean

Wasabi House

Their sushi is delicious, and they often give customers extra snacks. Also, I remember they seem to have discounts after 9.00 PM.

Song's restaurant

Song's restaurant is a small Korean restaurant with a nice atmosphere and good food.

JUKAI Japanese & Thai

JUKAI Japanese & Thai, all you can eat for 29.99 for each person. They have the best sushi in HRM.

Sushi Nami Royale

Sushi Nami Royale It is one of the best sushi restaurants in the city; everything is fresh.

Busan Korean BBQ

Busan Korean BBQ is a great Korean barbeque place to go out with family or friends. It has a special lunch menu from 12:00–4:00 PM for affordable and delicious Korean dishes.

Sushi Jet

Sushi Jet is a very convenient and affordable Japanese restaurant. I especially like their "Sushi Appetizer."

Kor-B-Q

Kor-B-Q is a Korean BBQ restaurant located at 278 Lacewood Dr. Halifax. This Korean Grill restaurant serves All-you-can-eat Korean BBQ. The food there tastes very good, they have fresh ingredients and premium raw meats, and the price is not very high.

Sushi Cove

Sushi Cove is a lovely family-run business with beautifully presented and fresh sushi with original roll combos and the crispiest tempura!

Gangnam Korean BBQ Halifax

Gangnam Korean BBQ Halifax is the best Korean restaurant. It's at 1261 Barrington St. it has the best Korean BBQ cuisine. The ingredients are very fresh, and the service is very friendly.

Bap House Korean Kitchen

Bap House Korean Kitchen is a Korean restaurant located on Quinpool Road. It serves healthy and fresh food. You can also create your bibimbap!

Italian

La Frasca Cibi & Vini

La Frasca Cibi & Vini A beautifully designed Italian restaurant located in the downtown area at 5650 Spring Garden Rd combines classic Italian dishes with a modern twist. A lovely ambiance creates a perfect location for a date night or anniversary meal!

Mappatura

Mappatura - Italian restaurant on Spring Garden Road.

Formal

Muir Restaurant

Muir, Drift, Cafe Lunette are part of Muir hotels and restaurants. Muir is one of few restaurants mentioned in Forbes and is perfect for formal gatherings and events. Worth trying.

aFrite

aFrite is a restaurant located at 1360 Lower Water St owned by Masterchef Canada contestant (Seasons 2 and 7) Andrew Al-Khouri. aFrite showcases modern Mediterranean fusion based on Andrew's mother's traditional Syrian cooking style.

Fast food

Spring Garden McDonald's

The McDonald's on Spring Garden road is often quite busy, but it is a great place to go for your 3 AM McNugget cravings. This is easy to navigate for Dalhousie students, as it is a straight line east from Coburg Rd.

Quinpool Road McDonald's

A McDonalds restaurant located on Quinpool road. It offers a drive-thru and a mural of the public gardens.

Charger Burger

Charger Burger is one of the few Halal burger restaurants in Halifax. They use fresh ingredients from top-quality Nova Scotia producers. They have a great dining area with friendly staff.

Timberlea Tavern

Timberlea Tavern is a great place to enjoy bar foods such as wings, burgers, nachos, sandwiches, salads, and much more while enjoying a few drinks. Be sure to check their event schedule for live performers.

Chkn Chop

Chkn Chop, as the name implies, is a chicken-oriented restaurant in the north end of Halifax. They serve a variety of sandwiches, poutine, cooked chicken, drinks, and more. They also have weekly rotations on their sandwiches and wings every Tuesday.

The Chickenburger

The Chickenburger is a staple of Bedford, a classic dinner/fast food restaurant located on the Bedford Highway. They've been open since 1940. They sell chicken burgers, hamburgers, hot dogs, fish and chips, and more. I always like getting their milkshakes.

KFC

KFC is the only KFC in downtown Halifax. If you want the familiar KFC taste in Halifax, go to this one.

Fries&Co

Fries&Co Located at 2603 Connolly St. It mainly sells fries and fried fish. It is one of the highest-rating fried fish stores in Halifax.

Woody’s BBQ

Woody's BBQ Their fried corn-on-the-cob with garlic butter is a delicious and unique side. They are open nightly all week. The address is 159 Hector Gate, Dartmouth, NS B3B 0E5.

Others

Swiss Chalet

Swiss Chaletis a Canadian chain of casual dining restaurants. The roast pork ribs are delicious.

Café Aroma Latino

Café Aroma Latino is a great spot to try Latin American cuisine; various dishes from breakfast to lunch can be enjoyed with region-specific drinks. In addition to serving food, you can purchase some grocery items from these countries.

Boondocks

Boondocks is a classic seafood restaurant on the shore of the inlet, facing McNabs island. The seafood chowder and the fish pie are my favorites. Just ask to add salt (They don't put enough).

Shiraz Restaurant

Image credit Shiraz is famous for its delicious Persian cuisine. If you are a Kebab fan, Shiraz should be one of your stops.

Battery Park Bar and Eatery

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There is a lot of exciting food that can be found in Halifax. Multiple cuisines, including Indian, Korean, Japanese, and French, can be found. The best place to find cheap and interesting Nachos is Battery Park Beer Bar and Eatery in Dartmouth. The menu and the further details of the bar can be accessed from their website. They serve till 11:00 PM. However, it is open till midnight. It is on a first come and first serve basis; hence, no reservations are required.

Darrell’s

Darrell's restaurant is a great diner-type place that serves award-winning burgers and shakes. My go-to dish is their award-winning peanut butter burger.

Feasts

Feasts All dishes are made with delicious fresh ingredients right before you! It can be customized as per your preferences.

Casablanca

Casablanca is an amazing restaurant with a great interior that offers delicious and authentic Moroccan food in Halifax.

5 Fisherman

5 Fisherman restaurant is a place that only provides seafood.

The Foggy Goggle

The Foggy Goggle The Foggy Goggle serves up a delicious assortment of healthy pub fare classics with a twist. Vegan and gluten-free options are available.

The Keg

The Keg is a good steak house. They have delicious food, and it is a really perfect place to date. I bet this is the best steak house in Halifax.

Buta Ramen

Buta Ramen is a good place if you're craving some ramen. They've got other appetizers, too, like edamame.

The Board Room Cafe

The Board Room Cafe is a board game cafe located on Barrington St. There's a wide variety of games you can play with friends for only $6 per session, plus a menu of snacks, meals, and drinks to keep you going!

Boston Pizza

Boston Pizza Boston Pizza, located on Granville Street, has a variety of delicious pizzas and fries, as well as a wide selection of drinks. The clean environment inside the hotel makes you feel comfortable. Customers can customize the pizza they want according to their preferences, one of the best pizza places in Halifax downtown.

Sea Smoke Restaurant & Bar

Sea Smoke Restaurant & Bar is a fantastic seafood restaurant on the waterfront with a beautiful patio and fire pit. They have nice oysters and sushi too.

Shadia's Pizza

Shadia's Pizza is the best place to get pizza, not only has pizza but also burgers and proteins. It is highly recommended. Fast delivery and delicious food!.

Cha Baa Thai Restaurant

Cha Baa Thai Restaurant is a restaurant that serves authentic Thai dishes and is recommended to people who like food with a spicier flavoring to satisfy their palates. Their Red Curry Noodle Soup and Pad Thai are especially delicious.

Mary's Place Cafe II

Mary's cafe is a very nice diner close to Dalhousie University and thus is a perfect place for students to visit. The food at the Mary's is delicious and well priced and contains many different types of food in each dish. The people working there are very friendly. location on map.

Armview Restaurant & Lounge

Armview Restaurant & Lounge is an old-school diner that overlooks the arm. They serve breakfast, sandwiches, steaks, and burgers.

Antojo Tacos & Tequila

Antojo Tacos & Tequila serves vibrant, Mexican-inspired dishes, plus an impressive collection of tequila and mezcal — all stunningly designed, eclectic settings.

Edna

Edna is a bustling one-room restaurant with a comfy bar. They have a neighborhood bistro serving locally sourced and seasonally inspired dishes.

CUT Steakhouse

CUT Steakhouse is one of the most famous steak restaurants in town. Also, this restaurant has dry-aged steak, where you can enjoy the different steak flavors in Halifax.

The Red Asian Fusion Restaurant

The Red Asian Fusion Restaurant This Chinese restaurant is my frequent go-to. Every dish of theirs is delicious and large. The Farmhouse's Fried Pork is my most recommended dish.

Halifax Bread Factory

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Halifax Bread Factory is the only place in Halifax that bake different variety of Persian (Iranian) bread and foods. Very clean and organized place. I am sure you will love this place.

Yonghe Noodle House

Yonghe Noodle House This noodle restaurant is my favorite, and I like their curry chicken noodles the most.

Tony's

Tony's is a local donair and pizza shop (family business) in Halifax, opened in 1976. Their TONY's FAMOUS DONAIRS is highly recommended. It is almost full of meat inside; not even the pita bread outside could wrap it completely (no matter the size).

Mary's African Cuisine

Mary's African Cuisine is an authentic African restaurant located on 1701 Barrington street. The restaurant offers a variety of foods from all over Africa. It is the perfect place to visit those who are homesick or looking to try some African food.

Your Father's Moustache

Your Father's Moustache, established in 1989, is a family-owned pub. They offer live music as well as outdoor seating. The chicken wings are very good!

Kai Brady's Fancy Dive Bar

Kai Brady's Fancy Dive Bar This is a worthwhile meal bar downtown. They provide rich locally brewed beer and very exquisite food. (Tips: all hamburgers are half price every Wednesday!)

Montana's Cookhouse

Montana's Cookhouse It's a chain restaurant, and their ribs and steaks are delicious. At the same time, the environment and service quality of the store is also very good, let people like it very much.

360 Lounge

360 Lounge This is an American fusion restaurant that boasts various mouth-watering items on its menu. The best part is all the food is halal, so it offers options for people of all faiths.

The Wooden Monkey

The Wooden Monkey is a really good restaurant, especially for seafood. It has two branches, one in Halifax and one in Dartmouth. They use the locally grown organic product.

Lot Six

Lot Six is a yummy place to eat, and they have a bottomless mimosa brunch on the weekend. It's also a nice date night spot.

Eliot and Vine

Eliot and Vine Located on Clifton street, Eliot and Vine serve various amazing dishes in a cozy yet fancy environment.

Coffee and tea

Golden Bakery

Golden Bakery Golden bakery is a nice local coffee shop located on Bedford highway.

Wired Monk Bistro

Wired Monk Bistro is a small local coffee shop and bistro located downtown Halifax.

Uncommon Grounds

Uncommon Grounds is a lovely little coffee shop that is a great place to get out of the apartment to study with a warm drink and great food.

Coburg Social

Coburg Social is a great cafe near Dalhousie's campus. They have a great selection of food and drinks that can be enjoyed inside or on their patio. This cute cafe also sells fun cocktails and other alcohol and occasionally hosts live music events.

Cabin Coffee

Cabin Coffee Cabin Coffee is one of the oldest family-owned coffee shops in downtown Halifax.

Good Luck Cafe]

Good Luck Cafe Located at 145 Portland St in downtown Dartmouth, this cute cafe has everything from coffee and pastries to fresh produce and take-home meals.

Tsujiri

Tsujiri A cafe and dessert shop located in The Curve on South Park Street. They specialize in matcha and sell drinks, sweets, and snacks inspired by traditional Japanese flavors.

The Daily Grind Cafe & Bar

The Daily Grind Cafe & Bar is located near the waterfront and is a great place to study or catch up with friends. As the name mentions, it is not only a cafe but a bar, which gives you the option to have your favorite beer while enjoying a good book.

Coffeeology

Coffeeology is a cafe located on Dresden Row. It is a tiny, cozy space known for its laid-back music and friendly environment. The coffee is amazing, and the baked goods are fresh from a local bakery.

Narrow Espresso

Narrow Espresso If you live near Fenwick street, this is the perfect place for your first cup of coffee in the morning. They open very early and have a rich variety of coffee and very favorable prices.

Trident Booksellers & Café

Trident Booksellers & Café is an old-fashioned cafe with a relaxed ambiance. However, most books might not be relevant, but their cafe is interesting as they make their coffee and have a decent variety of items in their bakery.

Pane ē Circo

Pane e Circo is Halifax's newest Italian Salumeria, serving quality products, including a vast selection of imported cured meats & cheeses, sourdough bread & artisanal pastries, and even fresh handmade pasta & sauces. If you get a chance to try it, I will get the almond croissant or any of the sandwiches!

Creamy Rainbow Bakery and Cafe

Creamy Rainbow Bakery and Cafe is a very good coffee shop. The egg tarts and puffs are very delicious.

Rabbit Hole Cafe

Rabbit Hole Cafe An elegant Cafe & Dessert Bar located in the heart of downtown Halifax, 1452 Dresden Row. A great rest stop to have a quiet study session or your personalized cake designed to your liking.

Dilly Dally Coffee Cafe

Dilly Dally Coffee Cafe is a coffee shop on Quinpool Road. You can grab a coffee or some amazing baked goods here! It provides a chill atmosphere with cute decorations.

Glitter Bean Cafe

Glitter Bean Cafe is a coffee shop on Spring Garden Road. It often has a seasonal drink on the menu and a lot of seating for anyone looking to study.

The Kiwi Cafe

The Kiwi Cafe is in Chester, the south shore of nova scotia, a beautiful place to have coffee and international themes. They are located right next to the sea, which is quite nice if you are a beach or sea person. You must visit.

LF Bakery

LF Bakery is a yummy bakery with many authentic French pastries on Gottingen street in the North.

The Bread Lounge Bakery

The Bread Lounge is a bakery and coffee shop located in downtown Halifax on Demone Street. They have pastries, desserts, sandwiches, soup, coffee, and more. A great place to study, meet with friends, or grab a quick lunch or snack!

Chatime

Chatime is located on 1480 Brenton Street. It's a cool shop for getting bubble tea, and it has a lot of variety in teas.

Zenq

Zenq is located on 1065 Barrington St. It serves Taiwanese Bubble Tea and Dessert.

Hitea

Hitea Hitea is a really good bubble tea shop and it is located at 480 Parkland Dr, Halifax.

Wineries and bars

Good Robot

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Good Robot is a restaurant and bar in the North End of Halifax, started by three engineers who were bored of the monotony of their jobs. They came together to create a funky robot-themed establishment with an outdoor patio lovingly called the GastroTurf, as it is fully astroturfed grass.

Benjamin Bridge

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Benjamin Bridge is an award-winning vineyard in the heart of Gaspereau Valley, known for its sparkling whites. You might know it as the brand behind the locally loved Nova 7 wine. They have recently been the buzz of the town as they have introduced the alcohol-free, wine-style beverage Piquet Zero, now being sold at grocery stores near you.

L'Acadie Vineyards

L'Acadie Vineyards Located in the beautiful Annapolis Valley. L'Acadie was one of the first organic wineries in Nova Scotia and has won many awards for its wines in Canada and Internationally. It is worth stopping for a tasting session if you can make it!

Luckett Vineyards

Luckett Vineyards Located just north of Windsor, overlooking the Gaspereau Valley. The estate started growing grapes in 2003 but did not open its doors to the public until 2011. This is a family-run vineyard that boasts a lovely restaurant. A must-stop location for wine tasting in Nova Scotia!

Dessert Shops

Rousseau Chocolatier

Rousseau Chocolatier makes one of the best mochas in the city. If you go there, don't forget to order pretty delicious macarons.

Cora Breakfast and Lunch

Cora may be disguised as a family restaurant but do not be fooled. Cora is a desert shop at its heart. Nearly all the dishes have fruit and desserts at the center, with meat used as decorations.

Dairy Bar

Dairy Bar is a seasonal ice cream shop on Spring Garden road. It has delicious ice cream, sundaes, and drinks that are worth the wait in their long lines. Dairy Bar is closed in the winter but will be open again in the summer.

Cacao 70

Cacao 70 is located on the Halifax waterfront and is an ice cream bar and dessert shop. Open year-round, Cacao 70 is a great place to visit with friends.

Creamy Rainbow Bakery and Cafe

Creamy Rainbow Bakery and Cafe is a dessert restaurant in Halifax Downtown. Their egg tarts and puffs are very delicate and delicious.

Le French Fix Pâtisserie

Le French Fix Pâtisserie is a pastry shop located in Prince St. It's a fine-looking and smelling French baking. The pastries and croissants are always fresh. A must try if you haven't visited it yet!

LOS TOROS Auténtico Español

LOS TOROS Auténtico Español is a good spanish restaurant where near the harbour. There are serving delicious Spanish seafood and traditional food. I strongly recommend the Valencian seafood fried rice.

Government services

City Hall

City Hall is the home of the government of Halifax.

Service Canada

Service Canada is an important place for international students; it is at 1800 Argyle St. If you have visa and tax requirements, you must remember this place.

Access Nova Scotia

Access Nova Scotia It is probably the only place for you to do the paperwork for your motor vehicle. The walk-in is now available.

Government House

Government House It is the governor's house of Nova Scotia. It is one of the oldest existing government buildings in North America. The house has served for more than 200 years. It is a great Canadian national treasure.

City of Halifax

City of Halifax If you want to pay for your property taxes or any building permits, you can go to the City of Halifax. If you get the street parking permits, you can go to the City of Halifax.

Buildings

Halifax City Hall

Halifax City Hall This Place was constructed between 1887 and 1890 and is the largest and one of the oldest municipal buildings in Nova Scotia. If you are interested in architecture, you should visit this place.

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The Vuze

The Vuze From its name "The Vuze," Vuze is also spelled as Views which technically from its name you can tell it's like saying the Views. The Vuze is not just Halifax, the tallest building in all of Nova Scotia. It contains 28 floors for ordinary residents and five penthouses. In total, it has 33 stories high above the ground.

The Jade

The Jade This is a new building located on Barrington St. It is one of Halifax's most luxurious apartment buildings and has all new facilities. Here you can enjoy the most comfortable living environment. Also, it has a good view of the street or the sea.

Atlantic Hotel Halifax

Atlantic Hotel Halifax This black and white hotel is built on a bustling and lively street. It has become the best choice for many tourists with comfortable rooms and moderate prices. The hotel's excellent location allows people to go to the famous scenic spots in the city quickly. At the same time, you can overlook the city's night view. Customers can experience comfortable treatment at an inexpensive price.

The Paramount

The Paramount It's an apartment in downtown Halifax. It has very convenient transportation. As it's downtown so if you want to live here, it's very convenient to shop.

The Peninsula Place

The Peninsula Place The Peninsula Place is located at 1015 Barrington Street, Halifax. It is a nice apartment and very convenient. It is near the Atlantic Superstore and Halifax Railway Station.s

Park Victoria

Park Victoria The location of this apartment is excellent, and the price is also very cheap. The apartment is just off Spring Garden Road and is within walking distance of restaurants and various shops.

Quinpool Tower

Quinpool Tower The Quinpool Tower is located at 2060 Quingate Place; the location of the apartment building is very good, especially for students, as it is closer to Dalhousie University, SMU and Halifax Commons.

Libraries

Halifax Central Library

Halifax Central Library is a great library. I have been satisfied with each of my visits to the library. The staff and volunteers are very helpful. And using the printing services is always a breeze in the HCL.

Wallace McCain Learning Commons

Wallace McCain Learning Commons is also one of the Dalhousie libraries, and it is a very quiet place to study, and you can also borrow a computer and book a study room.

Killam library

KILLAM LIBRARY is my favorite place to study. It is at 6225 University Avenue. Killam library has a big space and quiet environment. In particular, you can book study rooms.

Kellogg Library

Kellogg Library/Learning Commons Another Dalhousie Library in the CHEB on the Carleton campus. It is bright and modern and has many study spaces and rooms that can be booked.

Patrick Power Library

Patrick Power Library is a library of Saint Mary's University. It is a peaceful and comfortable library.

Keshen Goodman Public Library

Keshen Goodman Public Library has lots of amazing books to borrow and many services to help newcomers and students. It has a kids section and a section to study.

Halifax North Memorial Public Library

Halifax North Memorial Public Library is another library closer and more accessible for people who live in the north end.

Woodlawn Public Library is another library located at 31 Eisener Boulevard in Dartmouth. It is a nice spacious library with many study rooms.

Bedford Public Library

Bedford Public Library is a library located on Dartmouth, near the Sunnyside Mall. It's a fairly large library with a quiet reading section and a section for children to be kept occupied. It's easily accessible through various routes coming from Dartmouth and Bedford.

Supermarkets

Loong 7 Mart

LOONG 7 MART This is a supermarket that specializes in Chinese and Asian food, with a wide variety of Chinese snacks, such as instant noodles, snail noodles, hot pot base. As well as some great tasting drinks, if you have the opportunity to come and see

Tai Shan mart

Tai Shan mart it's a Chinese supermarket with many Chinese snacks and daily necessities. I like to buy hot pot bases here.

M&Y Asian Market

M&Y Asian Market This is a Chinese supermarket located at 6238 Quinpool Rd. This supermarket has a wide selection of things. The cashiers in this supermarket are very helpful. The goods in this supermarket are good and cheap.

Topfresh Market

Topfresh Market I think this is the best Chinese supermarket in Halifax. It has a complete range of Asian food, and the price of meat and vegetables is much cheaper than that of downtown

Tian Phat Asian Grocery

Tian Phat Asian Grocery Our family goes there to buy Asian groceries. The staff is great, and it has most the the ingredient we need.

V&E's Convenience Plus

V&E's Convenience Plus is located on 480 Parkland Dr. It's a good Chinese supermarket, and most of The dumplings sold in it are handmade, which makes them more delicious than the dumplings sold by others.

Union Foodmart

Union Foodmart is located in Dartmouth. The largest Asia Supermarket that I have known.

South Asian Mart

South Asian Mart offers a complete range of ethnic groceries from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka at competitive prices.

Ca-Hoa Grocery

Ca-Hoa Grocery is an old Asian shop. You can buy some local Chinese sources and cooking tools here.

OCO mart

OCO mart is a Korean grocery store where they have a variety of Korean products.

Food & Nutrition

Food & Nutrition It not only focuses on selling products but also gives customers a new view on how to know their body well and choose and cook foods.

Shahi Groceries

Shahi Groceries is a South Asian grocery store. You can get your groceries and snacks from a selection of goods from your home country.

Baileys Meat Market

Baileys Meat Market This store is where Beef, Chicken, and Lamb meat is available along with loads of spices and snacks and food items or drinks from Arab countries and also Pakistan and India.

Shopping Centers

Halifax Shopping Centre

Halifax Shopping Centre is the biggest shopping center in Halifax. You can find all kinds of brands there and buy anything you want. Also, there is a Walmart that is opposite it.

Mic Mac Mall

Mic Mac Mall The biggest shopping center in Dartmouth offers you the opportunity to shop everything in Dartmouth without crossing the bridge.

IKEA Halifax

IKEA Halifax is the biggest shopping center for furniture in Dartmouth(like a shopping center but not exactly).

Park lane mall

park lane mall is a place to go shopping, watch movies, and browse Dollarama with your friends during the weekend

Scotia Square

Scotia Square is a shopping center near the Halifax Waterfront. It is probably best known for its large food court, featuring various restaurants. Connected to Scotia Square is a bus terminal for Halifax Transit. The proximity to other areas such as the waterfront and Citadel Hill make this a nice place to visit.

Sunnyside Mall

Sunnyside Mall This is one of the two malls in Bedford, Nova Scotia. It's a 30-minute drive from Halifax, but I wouldn't recommend going here as you can find everything in this mall and the HSC.

Winners

Winners is a good place for shopping because everything is cheap and high-quality. New cloth and designer fashions arriving several times a week.

The Black Market Boutique

The Black Market Boutique is an abundantly colorful store on Grafton St. featuring crafts and goods from around the world.

The Loot

The Loot is a curated thrift store selling vintage clothing, accessories, and art.

The Halifax Army Navy Store

The Halifax Army Navy Store, (also known as Ron's Army/Navy), is a family-owned military surplus store located on Agricola St.

Strange Adventures: Comics & Curiosities

Strange Adventures: Comics & Curiosities Canada's oddest and award-winning comic book store, located in both downtown Halifax and downtown Dartmouth. They have been selling comics since 1992.

Pete's Frootique

Pete's Frootique is a grocery store with locations at Dresden Row in Halifax and the Sunnyside Mall in Bedford. It has a wide selection of products that are hard to find elsewhere in other, larger grocery stores, including many international products from areas such as Great Britain. It also features a juice bar that serves many different smoothies and juices.

Value Village

Value Village is a thrift store where you can find essential everything. From electronics to vintage cloth, you can find anything at Value village.

Jennifer's of Nova Scotia

Jennifer's of Nova Scotia is a locally-owned gift shop. It exclusively carries locally-crafted products meant to share the Atlantic Canadian experience.

Oldest McDonald's

McDonald's Quinpool is one of the busiest stores and is the first-ever McDonald's in Halifax which is open 24*7.

Walmart

Walmart is one of the largest grocery stores in Halifax. You can find all kinds of groceries, electronics, home appliances, and stuff like curtains, cushions, and duvets. All at an affordable price.

The Monster Comic Lounge

Monster Comic Lounge is a collectibles store on Gottingen St. Here, you can purchase and exchange trading cards. Also, you can find various other collectible items, including figures, board games, and comic books.

Atlantic Photo Supply

Atlantic Photo Supply is the last retail store in Halifax that still develops color film on site. If you need to get your camera film developed, I recommend them for fair prices and speedy development times. They also sell camera equipment and prints if your into that sort of thing.

Dartmouth Crossing

Dartmouth Crossing It is not a shopping center; however, I am sure you will want to visit at least one of the places here. There are lots of places to get new summer clothes, and Costco and Ikea are there too! Plus, if you get tired and hungry while shopping, there are great food places such as Montana's or Boston Pizza.

Academic institutions

Dalhousie University

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Dalhousie University is a public research university that is more than 200 years old. Some of its historic infrastructures are worth visiting. Find more information about the university here.

King's College

University of King's College located near and working in collaboration with Dalhousie University. Located at 6350 Coburg Rd, Halifax.

Mount Saint Vincent University

Mount Saint Vincent University A Primary Undergraduate university locates at 166 Bedford Hwy, Halifax.

Saint Mary's University

Saint Mary's University is a primarily undergraduate university located at 923 Robie St near Dalhousie university.

Acadia University

Acadia University A public undergraduate university ranked among the top Canadian institutes is located in Wolfville, NS.

Nova Scotia Community College

Nova Scotia Community College Nova Scotia Community College is located at the end of Barrington St. It contains 130 programs at 14 different campuses in Nova Scotia. NSCC is a known university found in Halifax as it allows its students to be flexible and offers a lot.

NSCAD University

NSCAD University, also called the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, is a post-secondary art school in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. NSCAD offers an interdisciplinary university experience unlike any other art school in the country.

Université Sainte-Anne

Université Sainte-Anne Université Sainte-Anne is a french-language university located at 1190 Barrington St.

Cape Breton University

Cape Breton University Cape Breton University is located in Sydney, Cape Breton. It is the only post-secondary institution located in Cape Breton.

St. Francis Xavier University

St. Francis Xavier University is an undergraduate university located in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

Learning Opportunities

Halifax Central Library Media Studios

The Halifax Central Library Media Studios comes well-equipped with musical instruments, recording equipment, and top-quality software. You can even do video editing since it has a green screen in one of the studios. To top it off, you can rent out equipment and learn various things through your library card, which has access to LinkedIn Learning; all this is FREE!

Here We Code

Here We Code movement is about collaboration between industry, and school for the evergrowing economic and social future for all communities in Nova Scotia.

Farmers Markets

Bedford basin Farmers Market

Bedford basin Farmers Market Greek owned farmers market with a bistro, spice market, and imported goods from Europe (Mainly Greece and Germany)

Halifax Seaport Market

Halifax Seaport Market The Halifax Seaport Farmers' Market was created in 1750 and is the oldest, continuously operating farmers' market in North America. In July 2022 The Halifax Seaport Farmers' Market will move to the west end of Pavilion 23.

Transportation

Convenient access to transportation is important to commute around, visit places, and access amenities. There are many ways of transportation available in Halifax which will help you to get around different parts of the city.

Taxis

Taxis are readily available in downtown Halifax, Dartmouth, and neighborhoods. Uber services have also recently started in Halifax, making commutation even cheaper. Some of the taxi services include Casino Taxi, Yellow Cab and Halifax Airport Taxi & Limousine Service

Ferries

Ferries are operated by Halifax Transit, a public transport service run by the government. A 15-minute ride between Halifax to Downtown Dartmouth at just $2.75 is a must-to-do experience for visitors and travelers.

Halifax Transit Buses

Halifax Transit also provides Transit bus service throughout the Halifax region. Halifax Transit owns 353 buses, and they run from early morning to past midnight. The best thing about Halifax Transit Service is that the same transfer ticket can be used on both ferry and bus for commuting.

Moving to Halifax Guide

2021-11-21T08:34:00-05:00

Are you moving to Halifax, NS, Canada? Notes in this article might help you get going smoother. I assume that you are coming from outside of Canada. If you are moving domestically, some of the things might not apply to you; hence, feel free to skip them.

Landing in Canada

When you first land in any of the international airports in Canada, you will be directed to cross immigration. Typically, you plan your travel to Canada when your work/study permit or permanent residency (PR) application is approved. At the border, you will be asked to produce the permit or PR approval and you will get an actual work/study permit or PR. The whole process may take 2-3 hours, especially when the queue is long (sometimes 2-3 international flights come at the same time). Plan for it and do not book your connecting domestic flight, if any, with only 1-2 hours of gap.

Local address

If you have booked your apartment before landing in Canada, you have an address to provide in all your forms. But if you don't have a permanent place to live when you arrive, avoid providing your hotel/Airbnb address as your address in various (official) forms. You will have trouble getting the mails from your hotel once you move to your apartment since the mails (for example, from your new bank) will arrive at your initial accommodation. You may consider providing the address of your trustworthy friend/relative/colleague alternatively.

SIN

SIN (Social Insurance Number) is one of the most important things to do once you arrive in Canada. It will be required for you to get paid. Book an appointment in advance with Service Canada to visit personally to get it the same day. You can go to the nearest Service Canada without an appointment also but be ready to spend a couple of hours. You may apply online also, but it could take 1-2 weeks for it to come. Find more information about SIN application online.

Phone number

Obviously, you will need a mobile number from a Canadian provider. You may choose one of the big three companies - Bell, Rogers, and Telus. You may also consider the cheaper alternatives such as Public, Fido, and Koodo, especially for pre-paid accounts. Beware, phone connections are quite expensive in Canada. At the time of writing this article, a postpaid connection plan starts from C$80 per month. Figure out any deals available associated with your workplace/university. If you are a Dalhousie employee or student, you can get better deals with Bell; call them to know more.

Bank account

Time for goodies. Banks in Canada target newcomers and extend attractive offers. These offers may include cash, a monthly fee waiver for a year, and free safety deposit box. Check out the details from websites of major banks (Scotia, TD, CIBC, and BMO) and choose one that fits your needs. One interesting (and good) aspect of banking in Canada is that you are eligible to get a credit card (or loan) even if you don't have a credit history (but have a job). In the US, major banks do not offer credit cards unless you have a decent credit score and you don't have a credit score for at least 5-6 months. It is recommended that you book an appointment with a bank of your choice prior to landing, so you can have your bank account set up as soon as you get here.

Housing

Honestly, finding a rental apartment is challenging in Halifax. Currently, Nova Scotia is going through a housing crisis. Rental apartments are expensive and scant. They appear in the market and disappear within a couple of days, if not hours. Rental apartments near/in downtown are expensive and small. If you are willing to live within the radius of 4-5 KMs of Halifax downtown, you may get good localities with relatively more supply of apartments (for example, near Bayers Park). As for places to find rentals, you can try looking at Kijiji or Facebook marketplace (this is useful for a variety of things, including furniture; you may get some very good deals if you keep an eye out). There are some dedicated Facebook groups (such as Indians in Halifax) also to facilitate the search.

Public transport

Halifax has public buses (but not metro/train). Within and around Halifax downtown, buses cover the area well with decent frequency. As you go far from the downtown, the network starts thinning. Each bus ticket costs C$2.75 per ride; each ticket is valid for 90 minutes. If you are taking the bus every day, you may obtain a monthly pass for C$82.50. There is a student pass for Dal students (fee included in their college fee). Dal employees may opt-in for Xpass for around C$60 per month. More details about the Halifax transit system can be found online. Keep in mind that the bus stops are not as frequent outside of downtown, and you may need to have some mode of transport to get there. The buses here do have a provision for carrying your bicycle, and you can find bicycles for fairly cheap. Keep in mind, however, that riding a bicycle may be quite uncomfortable during the winter.

Groceries

You can find many big grocery stores such as Walmart, Sobeys, and Atlantic Superstores all over the city. Typically, they not only have vegetables, fruits, meat, dairy, and other products but also a fresh bakery and even fresh coffee. They also typically have an international food section where you may find groceries from other countries. For Indian groceries, there are many options. The best option that I came across so far is New India Bazaar. Some other options are BIGS and Namaste Indian grocery. It is recommended that you sign up for memberships for these grocery stores, and have apps like Flipp set up so you get notified when any worthwhile deals are on.

Health insurance

You need to register yourself for provincial health insurance referred to as Medical Service Insurance (MSI). All individuals including work/study permit holders, apart from permanent residents and Canadian residents are eligible to obtain the insurance. For the registration, you need to call to MSI office (1-800-563-8880). Upon registration, they will send a form; you need to send the filled form along with a copy of your study/work permit or PR to get the MSI cards.

Register for a family doctor

Once you get your MSI cards, you can register yourself for a family doctor. The waiting time to get a doctor is very long (in years) in Nova Scotia. There are other opportunistic (and legal) ways to get a family doctor but be prepared to wait for a long time.

You may ask, what will happen if you have a medical emergency and you don't have a family doctor? In case of emergency, you can go to public hospitals to get treated. Healthcare in Canada is free; you need to bring your MSI card to utilize hospital services. Some of the medicines/services might not be covered by MSI; in those cases, medical insurance from your employer (if any) comes into the picture. Even further, some of the services that are not covered by MSI and the medical insurance, might be covered by HSA (offered by your employer). Check with your benefits department (benefits@dal.ca for Dalhousie) to obtain more details.

Internet

Internet broadband for home is offered by many companies such as Bell Alliant and Eastlink. Typically, these providers offer bundle Internet with TV. If you are moving to an apartment/home where the Internet is not enabled/installed, call one of the providers and book an appointment in advance (at least one week); otherwise, you will have to live in your new place without Internet until the date of the appointment.

Driving license

If you are moving from one of the eight countries (including the USA, Austria, Germany, and the UK) or another Canadian province, you can exchange your existing driving license with the Nova Scotia driving license. You just need to go to any RMV with one identification (such as a passport) and your existing license. If you would like to apply for a fresh driving license, Nova Scotia has a graduated driver license system with 3 levels. You may find more information about driving licenses online. If you are coming from a country that is not among the eight mentioned above, make sure you get your previous license. This can help you circumvent the requirement for holding the learner license for a year. You will still need to write the written test and give the road test though.

Car insurance

Insurance premiums can be quite expensive for new people in Canada. If you have a driving license and driving history from Canada and the USA, then it would help to reduce your car insurance premium. If you are coming directly from another country, be ready to pay a hefty insurance premium at least in the beginning. TD, The Co-operators, Intact, and Aviva are some of the prominent players in the insurance market. When you are looking for car insurance, make sure to get as many as quotes from different providers. Their quotes differ by a very significant margin. The highest quote that I got was three times (yes, 300%) more than my lowest quote for the same benefits/coverage!

Nova Scotia ID Card

While living in Nova Scotia, it is recommended that you obtain a Nova Scotia Identification card. The ID is very useful as it will include both your date of birth and your picture. Identification cards can be obtained from Service Nova Scotia.

Contribute

If you would like to add more information to this article, feel free to clone the repository, make changes in the markdown file, and raise a pull request. All contributors will be acknowledged.

Contributors:

Tushar Sharma
Qurram Zaheer
Shivam Bhojani

Moving from India to the USA? Some tips to make your transition easier

2021-01-03T03:15:00-05:00

It's a long due post. I moved to the USA more than a year ago; first six months, I waited to understand things but later on, I just kept postponing writing this article. Anyway, here we go. If you are moving from India (or for that matter, anywhere else) to the US, some suggestions derived from my experience may help you to be better prepared.

Things to bring (and not to bring) from India

Spices: Indians are considered crazy about their love of spices. Hence, the first hunch of an Indian could be to get all kinds of spices and even rice. If you are thinking along these lines, then you need to calm down. You will find all kinds of spices in Indian stores in the USA. These stores are present almost everywhere in the country so just search for the nearest store where you are going and that's it.
Kitchen vessels: You may carry some vessels (plates, cutlery, etc.) to get started. Depending upon how much weight you may carry you may strike a balance. The important thing is to get a pressure cooker and optionally a rice/idly maker. You can find them here also but it will cost more than the typical Indian stuff.
Electronic appliances: Honestly, it's a mistake to bring anything electronic, apart from your laptop and mobile phone, to the USA. Not only the plug but also the required voltage is different for both the countries and that makes many things (such as iron) useless in the USA. Don't forget to get a couple of adapters for your Indian appliances.
Money: Obviously, you need money here; more importantly in USD. You may get a prepaid card from major banks in India. Put the majority of the money that you would like to bring in the card and some money (maybe a thousand) in cash just for emergencies. You will need the prepaid card till the time you open a bank account in the USA and you get a debit card; so, plan for that duration.
Medicines: Bring some medicines that you typically take for common issues (such as flu and cold).

If your employer is allowing you to ship your stuff then partition your things into three parts. First, the things that you need immediately that you will take with you. Second, the things that will come via air (maybe around 4-5 cartons of 15-20 kgs each) and the remaining things that will come via ship.

Accommodation

Book a temporary place (something like Airbnb) for a couple of weeks initially to stay if your company (if you are coming on employment) is not providing one. You need to find a place (usually an apartment) during this temporary stay.

Now, the question is where you should get your rented apartment? If you are working/studying without kids, then the choice is rather open; you may choose to stay near your workplace. However, if you have kids, then you first need to find the region/community with the best schools. In the USA, your kid can only go to the school assigned to that region. Therefore, choose a school first and then look for an apartment in that school region.

You have to sign a lease for the apartment. The duration of the lease varies from 12 months to 18 months-typically the longer you stay, the lesser the rent amount. The apartment office might ask you to pay a security deposit (1-2 months of rent).

Before you shift to your rented apartment, you will be asked to get rental insurance. Also, you need to create an account with an electricity and heating provider. They may ask you to pay a security deposit (since you won't be having any credit history). When you call these providers, be ready to spell your name appropriately (say T for Thomas, U for Umbrella, and so on rather than saying T U …).

Get started in the USA

Mobile connection: Get a prepaid connection first; you will get it easily with your passport. Once you have a rented apartment and driving license, you may convert the same into a postpaid. If you have an unlocked device (typically all devices sold in India are unlocked), then you can use the same. If you would like to get a new device, check the plans from the telecom providers and research a bit before making a decision.
Bank account: Obviously, it is an important thing and you should visit a bank nearby as early as possible after reaching the country. The major banks are Wells Fargo and the Bank of America. If your organization prefers a specific bank, open your account there. You can open the account with your passport and visa.
SSN: You will need a Social Security Number (SSN) if you are getting paid in the USA. To apply for it, you need to visit an SSN office and apply for a new SSN there. You need to check the required list of documents before visiting the SSN office. Once you apply for SSN, it typically takes 2-3 weeks for the SSN to arrive. Once you get the SSN, update the SSN in your bank account and with your employer; apart from these cases, keep your SSN at a safe place and do not share with random people or shopping stores (once, I was asked to provide my SSN to register on their loyalty program and to get discount; obviously, I declined.).
Driving license: Once you get your SSN, apply for a driving license. The rules and the process differs from state to state. In NC, you need to get a learner license first. Then you need to take a written test (taken on a computer) as well as an oral test (for traffic signs). You will get a driving manual to read the rules to prepare for the exam. After you pass the written test, you will take the driving test with a DMV personnel. Practice before taking the test even if you used to drive in India. The right-hand vs left-hand drive difference could be very significant. Also, observe other people to learn some intricacies (for example, priority rules when you are on a crossing without a signal). One issue that you may face is that you are required to bring a car for the test. If you have any friends, they may lend you (if they believe in your driving) or you can rent a car for the purpose.

Initial furniture

Typically, the apartments do not have any furniture. You may consider buying furniture from Ikea. They have a home delivery option also on flat charges. There are some places to get used furniture; they are significantly cheaper. You may try the Facebook marketplace to find what you need.

School admission

If you have kids, you will need to admit them to the nearby school. Make an appointment with the school and take your child to school. After completing formalities, you may have to go to an exam center where the teachers assess the kid's learning capabilities. After this on-boarding process, the kid can start going to school.

Get a car

You are handicapped without a car in the USA. initially, you won't have a driving license and hence practically you can't buy a car. USA loan system relies on your credit history and hence if you don't have a good credit score either you won't get a loan or it would be very expensive. Initially, you can't get a loan because you don't have any credit history. If the money is not a problem for you, buy a car by paying the whole amount. You may consider places like Carmax to buy a pre-owned car.

Before you get your car, you may have to wait a couple of months at least. During this time, you may get a rental car from places like Hertz or Enterprise. These are expensive options especially when you don't have your insurance. Consider cheaper options such as Turo.

If you don't use a car much, you may survive using Uber or Lyft. For low usage, they are cheaper.

Avoid raising credit request too early

When you go to buy a car, the dealer may ask you to provide SSN to check whether you are eligible for a loan. Do not raise a credit request until you have a good credit score. If you request credit too many times in a short span, it will negatively impact your credit score.

Your credit score becomes available after six months. Till that time, you should avoid asking for credit (in the form of a credit card or loan). After you get your SSN, you may consider applying for a Discovery credit card; it might not come with a high credit line but it will help you initially with your everyday expenses. Alternatively, you can rely on your debit card. Do not ask for a credit card from your bank, they will simply deny you unless you have a good credit score (which you won't have initially). The only good option with your bank is to get a secured credit card that will give you the much-needed convenience for everyday stuff and will help you building your credit history. Needless to mention, pay all your bills on time to build a good credit history.

YALCOM - Yet Another LCOM Metric

2020-12-24T06:41:00-05:00

This article is a spin-off piece from the paper “Do We Need Improved Code Quality Metrics?” by myself and Prof. Diomidis Spinellis.

Earlier, I wrote an article about issues with code quality metrics; in another article I presented how all the variants of LCOMmetric misrepresent simple cases of class cohesion. In this article, I first summarize the deficiencies in the present set of LCOM variants (LCOM1, LCOM2, LCOM3, LCOM4, LCOM5) and then I present YALCOM that addresses the issues of existing LCOM variants.

Deficiencies in existing LCOM variants

LCOM1-4 take into account only the instance attributes of a class, ignoring any static attributes. Although the dynamic properties of a static attribute differ from the instance attributes (for instance, static attributes can be accessed without creating an object), these attributes are part of the class they reside in. In the context of a metric that measures the similarity among class members, their dynamic property is irrelevant. Therefore, ignoring static attributes while assessing cohesion is inappropriate.
The existing LCOM algorithms fail to distinguish the cases where the metric cannot be measured, from the perfectly cohesive cases, by always emitting the lowest metric value in the former cases. For instance, LCOM2 reports 0 not only when the type under measurement is completely cohesive, but also when the type is an interface and a utility class, i.e., a class with no attributes. Such an approach produces the illusion to the user that all cases with a metric value of zero are cohesive, while in reality, the algorithm was not provided with enough information to measure the metric and the algorithm fails to communicate this to the user.
Method invocations within a class show that methods are working together to achieve a goal and thus must be considered while computing LCOM. However, LCOM1-3 and LCOM5 do not consider method invocations to compute the metric.
Furthermore, the existing LCOM implementations focus on the common attribute access among methods within a class; however, they ignore common attribute access where the attribute is defined in a superclass. Classes are extensions of their superclasses, and it is very common to elevate data and method members to superclasses to avoid duplication among siblings. Hence, two methods that share attribute access or method invocation that is defined in a superclass contribute to cohesion and thus must be considered while computing the metric.
Lastly, Fenton and Pfleegerstated that a metric may follow a suitable measurement scale (such as nominal, ratio, and absolute) depending on the aspect being measured. LCOM1--4 measure cohesion on an absolute scale that may emit an arbitrary large number as the metric value making it almost impossible for the user to gain any insight from it. For instance, given that m is the number of methods of a class, the maximum value that LCOM2 may produce is (m * (m-1))/2, which could be a considerable number for large classes. To facilitate metric interpretation and comparison, bounded concept such as cohesion must be better represented by a normalized value.

YALCOM

The algorithm takes a type i.e., a class or an interface as an input. The algorithm returns -1 when the algorithm finds that the metric is not computable otherwise it returns a LCOM metric value [0, 1]. The metric is not computable when the number of methods is zero, or when the analyzed type is an interface. The algorithm creates a graph where the methods and attributes of the class are treated as vertices. Here, attributes from superclasses that are accessible from the class are also included. Relationships, i.e., field accesses and method invocations, among the methods and attributes, make the edges. For example, if a method m~1~ accesses attributes a~1~ and a~2~ as well as calls method m~2~, then the node corresponding to method m~1~ will have edges to nodes representing attributes a~1~ and a~2~ as well as to method m~2~. Once the graph is constructed for the input class, the algorithm finds the disconnected subgraphs of methods. If the number of disconnected subgraphs is one, then all the attributes and methods are connected to each other and hence the class is perfectly cohesive (and thus assigned as 0 as the metric value). If the number of disconnected subgraphs is more than one, it implies that there are many islands of functionality within the class and hence the class is not cohesive. Here, the higher number of such subgraphs implies poorer cohesion. We compute the metric by dividing the number of disconnected subgraphs by the number of methods in the class. Since the number of disconnected subgraphs cannot be more than the number of methods (when none of the methods is associated with rest of the methods in the class), the maximum value that the algorithm can produce is 1.

Validation and comparison

In order to establish whether the commonly used set of LCOM metrics sufficiently capture the cohesion aspect of abstractions, we handcrafted eight classes/interfaces representing different cases. They are designed to cover various common cases involving interplay of method calls, fields-their type (a class or an interface) and their accesses, and inheritance that impact class cohesion and may potentially reveal the deficiencies of the existing algorithms to compute LCOM.

The details of each of these cases as well as the performance of all the existing LCOM metrics and the proposed metric is presented in our paper. The source code that implement the considered variants of LCOM and YALCOM can be found on GitHub.

Issues with Code Quality Metrics

2020-12-24T05:55:00-05:00

This article is a spin-off piece from the paper "Do We Need Improved Code Quality Metrics?" by myself and Prof. Diomidis Spinellis.

Software metrics have always been on a roller-coaster ride. On one hand, researchers and practitioners have adopted metrics not only to reveal quality characteristics of their programs, but also to combine existing metrics into new ones, and use these to study more complex phenomena. On the other hand, metrics have drawn wide criticism. The majority of this criticism is related to completeness and soundness.

The first case covers the extent of completeness of the implementation details provided to compute the metrics independent from the programming language. For instance, implementation details of metrics in C&K suite are missing, leaving it up to one's interpretation. Two examples of such deficiencies involve the lack of concrete details for the implementation of the lack of cohesion in methods (LCOM) metric, and the incomplete definition of the coupling between objects (CBO) metric. Particularly, the definition of the CBO metric does not clarify whether both incoming and outgoing dependencies or only outgoing dependencies should be used in the calculation.

Soundness of a metric refers to the ability of the metric to accurately capture the notion underlying its theoretical basis. Shepperd and Ince presented their critical view on the Halstead, cyclomatic complexity, and information flow metrics. They wrote that the computing rules followed in the Halstead metrics are arbitrary and make use of magic numbers without providing sufficient theoretical foundation. For instance, programming time T is computed through the formula T = E/(f * S), where E is referred to as programming effort, fas seconds-to-minute ratio = 60, and S as Stround number = 18. Furthermore, these metrics use tokens and number of operators and operands, which are considered too simplistic and primitive, because they fail to capture control, data, and module structure. Finally, Shepperd and Ince pointed out that Halstead metrics were developed in the era of batch processing where software systems were of a considerably smaller scale than today-often amounting to a few hundred lines of code. Similarly, other metrics such as cyclomatic complexity and maintainability index are also criticized for poor theoretical basis and validation.

A sound metric computing mechanism not only depends on the implementation, but also on the crisp definition of the metric [Fenton1997]. From the implementation perspective, different metric tools often produce different results for the same source code [Sharma2018]. More importantly, a metric is deprived from its usefulness if it does not measure what it intends to, especially in commonly occurring cases. SonarQube, a widely used platform to measure and track code quality metrics and technical debt, identified that cyclomatic complexity fails to represent ``complexity'' of a snippet correctly (for instance, in the presence of switch-case statements). The platform has recently introduced a new metric, i.e., cognitive complexity, as an alternative to the cyclomatic complexity metric.

Similarly, despite the availability of many variants (LCOM1, LCOM2, LCOM3, LCOM4, LCOM5, the lack of cohesion in methods (LCOM) metric is another example where the intended characteristic, i.e., cohesion, is not always correctly captured.

Apart from the issues of the existing metrics reported above, the following concerns are also identified regarding the commonly used code quality metrics. First, the present set of code quality metrics is mainly designed for object-oriented programs. Nowadays the software development community extensively uses programming languages, such as Python and JavaScript, that are not strictly object-oriented. Hence, the present set of metrics is not applicable in its original form on such languages. Second, the focus of code quality metrics has been limited to methods and classes. There is hardly any metric at the level of architecture granularity. For instance, akin to a complex method (inferred by using cyclomatic complexity metric), it is difficult to comment anything about the complexity of a component or the entire software system. Finally, recently, sub-domains of software, including tests and configuration code have become inseparable parts of the production code. The present set of metrics hardly support these sub-domains. Metrics such as code coverage for configuration and database code, as well as coupling between the test or infrastructure code and the production code could provide useful insight for the development community.

A survey: Opinions of software developers

We designed a questionnaire to be used in an online survey to gather the opinions of software developers and researchers. We received 78 complete responses belonging to different experience groups.

In the one of the questions, respondents were asked to choose from a list of commonly used code quality metrics, which ones they use and monitor on a regular basis. As expected, lines of code (LOC) and cyclomatic complexity (CC) are the most commonly used metrics; 54\% and 52% of the participants selected them, respectively. Almost none of the participants use Halstead metrics. Apart from the provided options, participants further mentioned that they rely on test coverage and clone percentage. Still, 26% of the participants affirmed that they do not use any metrics.

Next, respondents were asked whether the current set of metrics provides sufficient insight regarding software design. The majority (46% agree and 6% strongly agree) of the participants acknowledged that they get insight about software design using the current set of metrics. We asked a similar question about software architecture, and the majority (31% disagree and 15% strongly disagree) of the participants stated that the current set of code quality metrics is inadequate to measure quality of software architecture.

The next question inquired whether code quality metrics provide sufficient insight for the sub-domains of software development testing and infrastructure. Regarding the testing sub-domain, participants seemed divided. The majority (31% disagree and 4% strongly disagree) of the participants stated that code quality metrics fall short with respect to testing. The negative opinion was amplified for the infrastructure sub-domain. A clear consensus emerged among 61% (41% disagree and 20% strongly disagree) of the participants who supported that code quality metrics are insufficient to provide insight regarding infrastructure. Undoubtedly, a lot of progress is expected toward measuring infrastructure code quality.

An additional question was included regarding metrics showing inaccurate values due to wrong implementation and specification of the applied algorithm. 32% of the participants agreed that they often see inaccurate metric values due to wrong implementation of the metric tools. Another 39% of the participants did not notice any incorrect metric values.

I invite you to take a look at our paper for more details.

Making of a Programmer

2020-01-11T02:01:00-05:00

Recently, I was reading "Coders: The making of a new tribe and the remaking of the world" by Clive Thompson to write its review for Computing Reviews. In the book, he takes the reader on a fascinating journey of the evolution of computing systems and software programmers. In one of the chapters, he tells the story of early programmers in the 50s and 60s. Mary Allen Wilkes was one of such not-so-known legends who studied philosophy and wanted to practice law but somehow landed at MIT as a software programmer to program IBM 706. As one would expect, the life of a programmer is quite different then. She has to print his program on punched cards and wait for the computer to produce results. Often, as it happens with all of us, the program would not produce the expected results and then she has to go back, try to find the problem, reprint the cards and repeat the process. Not to forget here that those days, one computer is often shared among many programmers. It was not only tiresome but also frustrating to wait for hours to be able to run the program again.

While reading it, I went back to 20 years back down the memory lane when the passion to program was brewing strong inside me. It was 1998 when I got admission to a polytechnic diploma program in Jaipur (India) to study computer science and engineering. In the first semester, among six, we had two courses with labs. That was the first time, I saw close to 15 computers together. Those computers were 386/486-based machines without hard disk and hence without any OS; we used to carry large floppy discs with DOS to use them. The lab sessions were one hour each and hence we used to get a total of two hours to write our programs, debug them, and get results from them. We were writing tiny programs (such as finding the largest among three numbers, or checking whether a given number is prime) in BASIC (using GWBASIC interpreter). Some of us were really passionate about programming like addicts and thus two hours per week was insufficient for us to explore the world of programs with infinite opportunities. We first tried to optimize our lab time with some preparation. We used to plan what we would like to do apart from our assignments and write a BASIC program on paper. It helped but still, it was not sufficient.

I was sharing a small apartment with my two friends-both amazing human beings-on the first floor of a house; the ground floor portion of the house was occupied by the landlord. There was a basement in the house (it's not so common in India) where a timber company had a warehouse along with a small office. One fine evening, while talking to one of the sons of the landlord we came to know that the timber company also has a computer! Our eyes shine like a typical idea bulb glowing over the head. We asked the landlord's son whether we can access the computer. He baffled with the idea saying that it doesn't belong to them (landlord) and if the company guys figure out, he will be in trouble. He also said that during the day time company guys are there so anyways we can’t use it. We proposed to him that we will use the computer only during night time and its purely to experiment with our programs.

There we go! We opened the office silently and spend some time programming during the late-night hours. It was rather an old computer but it was sufficient for us to try some BASIC. I don't remember now how many times we went there. Later on, both of my friends got their computer. I got my first computer in 2002/2003 which was a used machine with Intel Pentium II 288 MHz and 8 GB of hard disk :) Oh, it seems I lived in another generation.

I was fascinated with programming. I wrote many small programs to quench the thirst to learn and create. It includes a small UI control library in C++, a utility program to transfer large files (in GBs) using serial ports, and a crude IDE (an editor written from scratch along with auto-indentation support). It was immensely satisfying.

The Internet was still not very accessible at that time in 2002-2003. I used to go to a nearby cyber cafe and pay Rs 10/15 for an hour to access the super-slow Internet; such cafes used to connect 5-7 computers to the Internet using a standard telephone line and a modem. Whenever we need some information, we used to plan a visit to a cyber cafe and come back from the cafe with text/HTML pages stored on a floppy drive. It was a common case that we spend one-hour collecting information about something and upon returning home with the floppy disk, we learn that it no longer works!

At the beginning of the year 2004, I was looking for an interesting idea for my final year engineering project. I had some vague thoughts on implementing an anti-virus. However, I met a friend during those days who was looking for a programmer to implement an inventory management software for his relative. His relative had a small medical store in a busy street in Jaipur. Though there were small software vendors present in India at that time the cost of the available software solutions was on a higher side and the store owner would like to save some money by getting it done from a student. From my perspective, it was great because I knew the value of getting a real-world project. Besides, I was constantly looking for sources of income in those days and this project would help me financially. Hence, I dropped my idea of implementing an anti-virus and took up the project.

I had a couple of meetings with the shop owner to understand his expectations and desired functionality. I learned Visual Basic for it and created the first working version in a few weeks. I wanted to show him what I did but his shop was on the other corner of the city and it used to take one and a half hours to reach there by public transport (and his email account was non-existent). When I called him to fix a time to show what I made and installed the first version on his computer, I learned that he doesn't have a floppy drive or CD drive on his computer. It was a challenge that made me think about how to install the software in his machine. Finally, I took my hard disk and reached there. I opened his computer chassis, plugged in my disk as a slave, and restarted the machine. After copying the installer, I did the same in the reverse order. He saw the demo and he was kind of fine. I was happy.

The next day, I got a call from him that the software is crashed! I was expecting some bugs but didn't expect the crash too early. I went there, understood the bug, came back, fixed the problem, and went back the next day to install the fix. This happened a few times but slowly the frequency of his calls reduced and finally stopped. It was a huge learning experience for me. I understood many small things that make a big impact on the users' side.

Those were the sweet early days. A lot has changed since then for the good. The newer generation of programmers has not gone through these kinds of experiences (but probably the different ones) but these experiences made the previous generation of programmers more patient and resilient.

What I Learned from My Ph.D.

2019-07-02T05:37:00-04:00

I recently completed my Ph.D. (thesis, defense presentation) and currently, I am cherishing my beautiful days back in Athens. This is also a laid back time (well.. not so much) to ponder about the last three and half years of investment. The pondering revealed that I learned many things during this period, not only technical but also concerning social and personal aspects. The major source of my learning is my supervisor Prof. Diomidis Spinellis, Prof. Panos Louridas, and colleagues from my lab and university. Here is an attempt to put together what I learned in words, at least some of them.

Automate experiments
Let us get started with a technical learning. During my initial days of Ph.D., my advisor hard-coded me to automate all the experiments related to a paper. I was not very convinced initially for automating small tasks, but soon I realized that I am repeating the tasks and wasting my time. We are doing research; our experiments will fail and we have to run them multiple times. Hence, creating automation for experiments at the beginning itself will not only pay off the effort in terms of time but also reduce the possibilities of making mistakes. Ideally, our whole experiment related to a paper should work with a single command---it applies to quantitative analysis, obviously. Many times, we need to run the experiment multiple times in different configurations or options; I typically put all the parameters of the program at one place with some basic documentation and make sure nothing else needs to be changed to run it multiple times except the initial parameters.
Seek impact
I came back to the academic world from the industry with the mindset that my academic work must solve a real problem or at least must help me or the community to achieve the goal. My belief became more profound in these years after interacting with many researchers and practitioners. In ICSE 2016, Prof. Gail Murphy presented an insightful keynote titled Is "Continuous Adoption in Software Engineering Achievable and Desirable?". Using a case study, she emphasized how a research work can make a broader impact and motivated us to seek for an impact beyond our Ph.D. thesis. This is one of the many occasions I realized the importance of making an impact rather than writing papers for the sake of publications.
Implications first
Implications are tightly related to impact; in fact, implications are our understanding of the potential impact. I remember when I presented a quantitative analysis to my supervisor and he asked: "so what?". Later he added that the analysis looks good but if there is no implication of this analysis why we are doing this. It was one of my significant learning; this has changed my perspective and I started asking myself "so what?" more often.
Failures are part of life
Failures, in terms of paper and grant rejections, are part of academic life. I remember the phase of my Ph.D. in which I faced six continuous paper rejections. My advisor always told me to learn from the mistakes and move on. I believe that we learn more from our rejected papers than the accepted ones.
Be rigorous and pay attention to details
Towards the end of my Ph.D., I was working on our smell detection using deep learning paper with Prof. Panos Louridas and others. We put together a data curation process and relatively large and complex experimental setup. He taught me not to look away from the finer details that may lead to wrong results even when we are in a hurry to submit. For example, he made me write all the fine-grain steps (that we normally don't write in papers) that anybody can read and replicate exactly from downloading a repository to all the way to tokenizing individual samples and preparing the final input which is ready to be given to a deep learning model. Though those suggestions look arduous at that time, they uncovered problems and emphasized their importance.
Serve-Give back more than you take
The academic world depends on peer service---our peers review our work to enable us to publish. All the successful academicians that I observe devote a significant amount of time towards servicing the community in the form of reviewing papers, organizing conferences, and be on the editorial board of journals. Whenever we submit a paper, we are creating work for others and hence we need to pay back the service debt. I believe that we should review more papers than we submit.
Network-Know your peers
This is one of the things that I learned quite late. Producing good work is definitely necessary and desirable. However, our academic success depends on our network to some extent and hence we need to use all the opportunities to know our peers and seniors. A lot can happen over a conversation during a conference lunch---honest and critical feedback of our papers, an idea for a new paper, our next job, and many other collaboration possibilities. Once a Ph.D. student is walking towards the completion and looking for the next move, these contacts may play an important role.
What we can do when we are not attending a conference? Well.. we interact with peers using social media. Social media can significantly help us with our research---especially when we are conducting a survey or requesting some feedback from peers.
Have a life-Ph.D. is part of your life, not your life
Obviously, Ph.D. is demanding and could be stressful at times. Working hard is necessary; however, at the same time, taking off and spending time with family and friends is also very important. It is important to realize that the Ph.D. is part of our life and not our life. Spending a weekend evening with friends in a balcony with beers in hand is blissful after working hard for the whole week.
I was blessed with a great company of friends in Athens. We spent countless evenings in the Plaka and other nearby areas in the center of Athens as well as in balconies either celebrating paper acceptance belonging to one of us or supporting the one over the beers whose paper got rejected recently. It's interesting (and funny) that I know city-center of Athens much better than city-center of Bangalore.

There are many more coming from living in a foreign country. I believe that the international experience made me more open-minded, flexible, and humble.

ICSE 2019: (Basic) Analysis of Accepted Papers

2019-05-20T12:28:00-04:00

The wordle above is generated from the titles of 109 accepted papers in ICSE 2019 research track.

ICSE 2019 is merely one week away and many of SE researchers will be flying to Montreal on the coming weekend to participate possibly in the biggest ensemble of SE researchers worldwide. I was taking a look at the accepted papers of the research track and was intrigued by some observations such as some universities/authors have contributed significantly. To understand it better, I carried out some basic analysis of the accepted papers during the last weekend.

I will first provide the process of extracting and curating the data and then present what I observed using the extracted data.

Data extraction and cleaning

First, I took the html code from the accepted papers page from ICSE website and saved it locally. Then, I wrote a small python script using BeautifulSoup to extract the required meta-data. You may find the script below.

The result of the script was far from clean. For instance, there were encoding problems in author names. Similarly, there were many variations in university names (such as 'College of William and Mary', 'College of William & Mary', and 'The College of William and Mary'). I manually fixed the encoding problems (to some extent) and normalized the organization names.

To assign organization type to each organization, I first used a heuristic that checks for the 'university' in the organization name and tag it as "Academic" otherwise "Industry". Wherever there are more than one affiliation mentioned for an author, I just picked the first affiliation to keep the analysis simple. Later, I manually checked each non-academic tag to fix the wrong assignments.

I also wanted to know whether a paper is the result of a collaboration between academia and industry. I used MS Excel functions to figure out whether the affiliation type associated with a paper has both industry and academia or only one type and assign PA (pure academic), PI (pure industry), or Y (collaborative) tags.

The resultant cleaned csv looks like the following.

You may download the CSV file.

Results

First, let us look at the top contributing organizations. The following figure presents the 14 top organizations having total number of unique papers more than three.

Not surprisingly, most of these organizations are academic except Microsoft. This brings to the next observation that explores the distribution of authors by their organization type. Following figure shows that close to 82% of authors belong to academia. A significant number of authors didn't mention any affiliation (resulting to a high number of NAs).

Further, it is interesting to observe what this distribution of authors leads to from collaboration point of view. The following figure shows the total number of papers that are written by authors belonging to both the worlds and by pure academic or industrial authors.

The figure shows that 21 papers has authors from both academia and industry. Not surprisingly, majority of the papers have only academic researchers. There are two papers which are written by authors belonging to only industry - one from Google and Microsoft each.

The final observation concerns with the top contributing authors. The following figure shows authors that have more than two accepted papers in the research track.

That's it for now. If you would like to play with the data, you may download the cleaned CSV from here. If you are coming to Montreal to attend ICSE, see you soon :-)

Analyzing Source Code Using Neural Networks: A Case Study

2019-04-14T06:04:00-04:00

Code smells indicate the presence of quality issues in source code. An excessive number of smells make a software system hard to evolve and maintain. In this article, we apply deep learning models based on CNN and RNN to detect code smells without extensive feature engineering, just by feeding the source code in tokenized form.

This article is derived from our paper “On the Feasibility of Transfer-learning Code Smells using Deep Learning” by Tushar Sharma, Vasiliki Efstathiou, Panos Louridas, and Diomidis Spinellis.

Overview

Above figure provides an overview of the setup. We download 1,072 C# repositories from GitHub. We use Designite to analyze C# code. We use CodeSplit to extract each method and class definition into separate files from C# programs. Then the learning data generator uses the detected smells to bifurcate code fragments into positive or negative samples for a smell—positive samples contain the smell while the negative samples are free from that smell. Tokenizer takes a method or class definition and generates integer tokens for each token in the source code. We apply preprocessing operation, specifically duplicates removal, on the output of Tokenizer. The processed output of Tokenizer is ready to feed to the neural networks.

Data curation

Implementation of all the data curation steps can be found on GitHub.

Downloading repositories

We download repositories containing C# code from GitHub. We use RepoReapers dataset to filter out low-quality repositories.

Smell Detection

We use Designite to detect smells in C# code. Designite is a software design quality assessment tool for code written in C#. It supports detection of eleven implementation, 19 design, and seven architecture smells. It also provides commonly used code metrics and other features such as trend analysis, code clone detection, and dependency structure matrix to help developers assess the software quality. A free academic license of Designite can be requested.

Splitting Code Fragments

CodeSplit is a utility programs that split methods or classes written in C# source code into individual files. Hence, given a C# project, the utility can parse the code correctly using Roslyn and emit the individual method or class fragments into separate files following hierarchical structure (i.e., namespaces becomes folders).

Generating Training and Evaluation Data

The learning data generator requires information from two sources-a list of detected smells for each analyzed repository and a path to the folder where the code fragments corresponding to the repository are stored. The program takes a method (or class in case of design smells) at a time and checks whether the given smell has been detected in the method (or class) by Designite. If the method (or class) suffers from the smell, the program puts the code fragment into a “positive” folder corresponding to the smell otherwise into a “negative” folder.

Tokenizing Learning Data

Machine learning algorithms require the inputs to be given in a representation appropriate for extracting the features of interest, given the problem in hand. For a multitude of machine learning tasks it is a common practice to convert data into numerical representations before feeding them to a machine learning algorithm. In the context of this study, we need to convert source code into vectors of numbers honoring the language keywords and other semantics. Tokenizer is an open-source tool that provides, among others, functionality for tokenizing source code elements into integers where different ranges of integers map to different types of elements in source code. Currently, it supports six programming languages, including C# and Java.

Data Preparation

We split the samples in the ratio of 70–30 for training; i.e., 70% of the samples are used for training a model while 30% samples are used for evaluation. We limit the maximum number of positive/negative training samples to 5,000. Therefore, for instance, if negative samples are more than 5,000, we drop the rest of the samples. We perform model training using balanced samples, i.e., we balance the number of samples for training by choosing the smaller number from the positive and negative sample count; we discard the remaining training samples from the larger side. An examples of the above described mechanism is shown in the following figure.

Selection of Smells

We chose complex method (CM— i.e., the method has high cyclomatic complexity), magic number (MN— i.e., an unexplained numeric literal is used in an expression), and empty catch block (ECB— i.e., a catch block of an exception is empty). To expand the horizon of the experiment, we also select multifaceted abstraction (MA— i.e., a class has more than one responsibility assigned to it) design smell. If you would like to know more about smells and their different types, here is a catalog of smells.

Architecture of Deep Learning Models

The implementation of above-mentioned CNN architecture is given below in python using Keras.

Along with RNN, we experiment with 1D and 2D variants of CNN; hence, we experiment and report three deep learning models (CNN-1D, CNN-2D, and RNN).

We use dynamic batch size depending upon the size of samples to train. We divide the training sample size by 512 and use the result as the index to choose one of the items in the possible batch size array (32, 64, 128, 256). For instance, we use 32 as batch size when the training sample size is 500 and 256 when the training sample size is 2000.

We ensure the best attainable performance and avoid over-fitting by using early stopping as a regularization method (with maximum epochs = 50 and patience = 5). It implies that the model may reach a maximum of 50 epochs during training. However, if there is no improvement in the validation loss of the trained model for five consecutive epochs, the training is interrupted. Along with it, we also use model check point to restore the best weights of the trained model.

Similarly, the employed RNN implementation of the above architecture is given below.

The complete implementation can be found on GitHub.

Results

Table 1 presents the number of positive and negative samples used for each smell for training and evaluation. We train our models with the same number of positive and negative samples; however, the evaluation sample is realistic i.e., we retain all the positive and negative samples obtained from the data curation process.

Following table lists performance metrics (AUC, precision, recall, and F1) for the optimal configuration for each smell, comparing all three deep learning models. It also lists the hyper-parameters associated with the optimal configuration for each smell.

Following figure presents the performance (F1) of the deep learning models corresponding to each smell considered in this exploration.

For complex method smell, CNN-2D performs the best; though, performance of CNN-1D is comparable. This could be an implication of the fact that the smell is exhibited through the structure of a method; hence, CNN models, in this case, could identify the related structural features for classifying the smells correctly. On the other hand, CNN models perform significantly poorer than RNN in identifying empty catch block smells. The smell is characterized by a micro-structure where catch block of a try-catch statement is empty. RNN model identifies the sequence of tokens (i.e., opening and closing braces), following the tokens of a try block, whereas CNN models fail to achieve that and thus RNN performs significantly better than the CNN models. Also, the RNN model performs remarkably better than CNN models for magic number smell. The smell is characterized by a specific range of tokens and the RNN does well in spotting them. Multifaceted abstraction is a non-trivial smell that requires analysis of method interactions to observe incohesiveness of a class. None of the employed deep learning models could capture the complex characteristics of the smell, implying that the token–level representation of the data may not be appropriate for capturing higher–level features required for detecting the smell. It is evident from the above discussion that all the employed models are capable of detecting smells in general; however, their smell-specific performances differ significantly.

Conclusion

We observe that deep learning methods can be used for smell detection with mere tokenized source code. Specifically, we found that CNN and RNN deep learning models can be used for code smell detection, specifically for implementation smells, though with varying performance.

Relevant links

Source code and data
Designite— Smell detection tool
CodeSplit
Tokenizer
My FOSDEM talk - Smelling source code using deep learning

Greek Islands - an Overwhelming Combination of Beauty and Tranquility

2019-03-17T21:04:00-04:00

Greece has more than one thousand islands, among which close to 200 are inhabited. These islands are scenic, blessed with many beautiful beaches, and are source of calmness and energy. This article provides an overview of the Greek islands and summarizes the key highlight of some selected islands and offers a message places_to_visit.append(Greek_islands).

Greek islands are categorized into four categories. First, Saronic islands situated near Athens. Second, Sporades islands near the second largest Greek island Euboea. Third, Ionian islands that are in the west side of mainland Greece. Fourth, Cyclades islands, a dense collection of islands, in the center of Aegean sea and fifth, Dodecanese islands situated between Crete (the biggest Greek island) and Turkey.

Selected Greek islands

This article is prepared by using the inputs provided by Greek students as one of the assignments for ‘Software Engineering in Practice’ course at AUEB in the spring 2019 that we designed to make them learn Git and GitHub. The original repository can be found here; I am presenting the curated version of the repository with my own touch.

Crete

Crete is the largest and one of the most distinctive and beautiful Greek islands. It stands far to the south of the country and has its own unmistakable culture and atmosphere. The north coast of the island is the most populated area, and most well known to tourists. Heraklion (or Iraklion) is the island’s capital and the main entry point to the island. Rethymnon and Chania (pronounced as Hania) to the west are much more pleasant and retain a distinct Venetian influence. To the east, Agios Nikolaos is one of the island’s major tourist attraction.

I wrote about Crete in a separate post. See Crete – Where I Lost and Found Myself at the Same Time

Evia

The island of Evia (or Euboea) is one of the closest to Athens and yet it is rather unknown. Second in size to Crete, it stretches from the tip of the Pelion Peninsula all the way south to the coast of Attika. It's southern tip is just a short distance from the Cycladic islands of Andros and Kea though unfortunately there is no ferry connection. It is so close to the mainland that you can drive to it. Evia has been and remains a popular summer holiday destination for Greeks and Greek-Americans, Canadians, Australians and others whose families originally came from the island. The topography of the island is as varied as anywhere in Greece, with sparkling Aegean beaches and coves on its east coast, a mountainous interior with rivers, streams and forests, a west coast that is a mix of beaches, the city of Halkida, large towns, industry, agriculture, beaches and wetlands. In the northwest, the town of Edipsos is the most popular spa in Greece with hot water gushing from rocks and crevices into the sea and pools of the many hotels and healing centers.

Ionian Islands

Kefalonia

Kefalonia's Myrtos beach (image credit)

Kefalonia is the largest of the Ionian islands. The sapphire waters of Kefalonia are steeped with history. Kefalonia is considered by many the home to Odysseus, the legendary king hailed in Homer’s The Odyssey. Explore the enchanting caverns of the Drogarati caves, sail to Ithaca on a glass-bottomed boat or marvel at the ancient artifacts inside the Archaeological Museum of Argostoli, Kefalonia’s main town or just hide from it all at one of the island’s many private beach coves.

Restaurants

Entertainment

Beaches

Myrtos
Antisamos
Makris Gialos
Skala
Lourdas
Foki Fiskardo

Lefkada

Kavalikefta Beach on Lefkada (image source)

Some people do not consider Lefkada an island because it has a narrow link that connects it to the mainland. However, once you are in Lefkada, you can instantly recognize the difference between being on Lefkada and on the mainland.

Restaurants

Beaches

Porto Katsiki
Egremni - One of the 13 places in the world with the bluest water among Maldives and Palawan.
Megali Petra - Translated to "Big Rock" got its name from the rocks scattered around the beach and the bottom of the sea.

Antipaxoi

Voutoumi beach (image source)

Antipaxoi is famous for breathtaking beaches. The easiest way to get to Antipaxoi is take a small boat from Gaios. If you are a fan of camping you can also try it in Antipaxoi.

After you finish your relaxing time at the beautiful beach of Antipaxoi you can take the same small boat and visit the wonderful caves that are located in different spots around the island accessible only by boat. By the way, you can rent your own boat!

Beaches

Vrika Beach - A beautiful beach with light-blue and green water
Monodendri

Restaurants

Corfu

The town of Corfu (image source)

Corfu is the second largest island among the Ionian islands. It has been a part of Greek mythology many times but now it is mostly known for its aged Venetian architecture. Well if you are not intrigued by an island that has amazing beaches, mountains to climb, lush vegetation to give you all the green you want to see, traditions and nice cuisine then at least visit it to see a landmark protected by UNESCO.

Beaches - Porto Timoni- Go down a mountain to find yourself on a junction where you may choose to go one of the two stunning sand beaches. - Cape Drastis - The road is a bit difficult so you will need a jeep or you can just walk down and arrive in a small beach where you can either enjoy the sun and do a spa with natural clay mask you can just pick up from the ground or the rocks - Canal D'Amour

Attractions - Olive Oil Tasting - Aqualand - Corfu Old Town - Vlacherna Monastery & Mouse Island - Achilleion

Night life

Kythira

Kaladi beach (image source)

It is located under Pelopponese and the combination of the 3 open seas around it. The island was a crossroad for merchants since the ancient times and also a fortress during wars due to its significant strategic position. The result of that reflects on the island's architecture, traditions and customs. Beside it's diversity, Kythira is also believed to be the island of Aphrodite, an ancient godess-protector of pure love. Due to that, during the modern days the island is believed to have an ability to create and maintain pure forever-lasting relationships for its occupants and visitors, which is also the reason why many couples visit the island annually.

Beaches

Kaladi
Melidoni
Diakofti
Kapsali

Tips from locals

You need to take captain Spyros Glass Bottom boat to the small island of Hytra - the only place where the local flower Sempreviva grows. There you can use Captain Spyros equipment to dive into the light blue waters and if you're a bit lucky you may find sea turtles staring at you.

Ithaca

Platia Ammos (Image source)

Odysseus's adventurous journey to his homeland of Ithaca made this island mythical and immortal. The intense alternations of the landscape, adorned with the beauties of wild and calm nature, make up a provocatively special relief. Its traditional settlements, deep blue waters, and many scenic landscapes are waiting for you to visit them.

Beaches

Platia Ammos
Dexa
Sarakiniko
Filiatro
Gidaki

Restaurants

Tsirimbis Restaurant - a local tavern that exists since 1956.
Sirens - a combination of local and gourmet cuisine.
Hanou Patisserie - located in the central square of the island; famous for its sweets.

If you are an adventure lover, you can visit Odyssey Diving and Sea Kayak Club where you can find the equipment for every sea activity. You can explore the bottom of the sea and some of the secret beaches.

Zakynthos

Shipwreck breach in Zakynthos (image source)

Zakynthos (Zante) is a verdant island endowed with valleys. The diversity of its landscape has resulted in different types of beaches - there are sandy beaches in secluded coves with deep blue water as well as rugged cliffs and an interesting underwater world will give you a sense of tranquility.

Beaches

Kalamaki beach is 8 KM away from Zakynthos town. Opposite to it stands the popular Cameo island accessible by a wooden bridge that has a cafe-bar and a tiny beach with shallow and warm sea water.
Makris Yialos is 25 KM away from Zakynthos town. The sea water is clear, deep and blue appropriate for scuba diving. There are numerous caves to be explored.
Porto Limnionas is a coast with magical natural beauty. It is located next to village Agios Leon. The beach has rocks surrounding the coast where the sea water is deep, crystal clear, and perfect for diving.

Laganas is the most popular part of the island, famous for its intense nightlife. There are plenty of nightclubs along the main road. Greek music is seldom heard, since Laganas mainly hosts foreign tourists. Many bars organize karaoke nights, quizzes and various other entertaining games. Many cafes show movies or sports matches on big screens.

Cyclades Islands

Santorini

Sunset in Oia

Santorini or Thira or Stroggylh (older name) is an island located in the south of Aegean Sea, part of Cyclades. Today Santorini is one of the most famous tourist destinations worldwide. The ground is volcanic and from the side of the volcano the island is extremely rocky. The most iconic things of the island is the mesmerizing sunsets that you can witness and traditional white-and-blue Greek houses.

Things to do

Be the part of iconic sunset at Oia and click awesome photographs of sunset with blue dome churches/houses
Walking tour to Volcano
Wine tour
Visit the archeological site of Akrotiri

I wrote my experiences of Santorini in this post.

Ios

Ios (Image source)

Ios is located in Aegean between Santorini and Naxos. This small island stands out with it's golden beaches and crystal clear waters. It is well known for its vibrant night life.

Beaches

Mylopotas
Magganari

Sightseeing

Little church of Agias Eirinis (17th century)
Tomb of Homer
Ruins of byzantine fort in Paliokastro
Archaeological Museum
Windmills

For the party lover, Far Out Beach Club is the to-go place. It is a club near the beach that offers accommodation and a pool. It is one of the most crowded places in Ios and is considered the best place to party in summer. You can be in your swimsuit dancing all day with great DJs on deck and get a temporary colorful "I ❤ Ios" tattoo from the body painters.

Ios (Far out Beach club (Image source)

Mykonos

Mykonos (Image source)

Mykonos's nickname is "The Island of the Winds". Mykonos is known for its vibrant nightlife and it is considered the most famous cosmopolitan island in the world. In addition, it has many establishments catering for the LGBT community.

According to mythology, Mykonos was formed from the petrified bodies of giants killed by Hercules. The island took its name from the grandson of Apollo, “Mykonos”.

Water sports

The island is a paradise for water sport enthusiasts! It is natural that the “Island of the Winds” attracts surfers and sailors from all over the world! There is a great choice of beaches for windsurfing; however, the most secluded ones are considered to be the best. Choose from Kórfos, Fteliá, Meyáli Ámmos and Kalafátis, where surfing lessons are also available. Diving fans can do a little exciting exploration of the underwater magic of Mykonos. September is considered to be the best month for diving, as the water is warm and visibility is good down at the seabed.

Food

Don’t miss the opportunity to treat yourself to some local Aegean specialties! Pepper flavoured kopanistí, a soft cheese seasoned with pepper, is the island’s gastronomic trademark. Try it as a topping on a round rusk spread with grated tomato, a favourite local mezés (appetiser). Meat eaters can sample “loúzes” (cooked pork filet with spices) and tasty local sausages sprinkled with pepper, and local oregano that has been caressed by the sun and dried in the north wind. To finish off your meal you can sample two exceptionally good local pastries, amigdalotá (small round cakes with ground almond, rosewater and caster sugar) and honey pie.

Nightlife

Mykonos is the top destination for the active and crazy nightlife. The famous nightlife and fun are the key ingredients that attract many young people from all over the world every year. Amazing beaches, elegant nightclubs and beach bars with DJs and international parties at all hours of day and night make Mykonos won rightfully the nickname “party island”.

Paradise night club (Image source)

Antiparos

Little islet, Antiparos (Image source)

Antiparos is a small island of Cyclades, located just next to Paros island. Antiparos is a nice destination for one day excursion from Paros. Nudism and camping are particularly popular on its beaches. Chora, the capital and only village of the island, has traditional Cycladic architecture with narrow paved streets, whitewashed houses, and lovely blue-domed churches. On the southern side, there is an impressive cave with stalactites and stalagmites.

Beaches

Faneromeni
Saint George
Nudist
Soros
Sifneikos

Restaurants

Naxos

Naxos (Image source)

Naxos is all about white long beaches, romantic alleys, peaceful sunsets, and unforgettable nights.

Beaches

Plaka
Agios Prokopios
Agia Anna
Orkos
Mikri Vigla

Restaurants

Bars

Local tip: Near Hawaii beach, there is a small food truck called FBI SA, where you can find burgers, hot dogs, bao buns etc. made with traditional local ingredients. It is simply AMAZING!

Siros

Syros (Image source)

Ermoupoli is not only the capital of Syros but also is currently the capital of Cyclades. Syros flourished after the year of 1826 when refugees from Chios, Crete, Psara and Mikra Asia joined the island. Syros has been a naval, industrial and cultural center of the modern Greece. The island is widely known for its musical tradition as it has contributed to the Greek music history with the songs of Markos Vamvakaris and the musical myth that follows him. Syros has been a hot destination for tourists throughout the years, but the last 3 years it has become the center of attention because of an athletic exhibition that is held in July (AegeanBall Festival).

Beaches

Posidonia - a well organized beach with beautiful sandy coast located 13 km south-west from Ermoupolis.
Agathopes - a small sandy beach close to Posidonia. It is a popular destination for tourist but mostly for family tranquil moments.
Asteria

Sifnos

Sifnos (Image source)

If you are looking for a perfect Greek island with a balance of beautiful beaches, low-key nightlife, white Cycladic villages, low-impact tourism, and maybe the best food in the Cyclades, then look no further than Sifnos.

Beaches

Kamares
Vathy
Platy Yialos

Restaurants

Nero Alati(Platis Gialos)
Felos(Ano Petali)
Tsikali(Vathi)

Milos

Milos (Image source)

Milos is the south-western most island in the Cyclades group. Milos is known mostly for its wonderful beaches that become the go-to holiday place for couples that want a romantic vacation.

Beaches

Kleftiko - This might not qualify exactly as a beach because there isn't one but there are a lot of boat trips around the island and almost all of them have this on their itinerary. You can swim in blue crystal waters and see the characteristic high rocks.
Sarakiniko - Your dream to see surface of the moon comes true here. The beach have white lunar-like surface which will make you believe that you are on some other planet.
Sikia - It was previously a sea cave; the roof of the cave is now collapsed. The shinning sun over the green waters make it a beautiful swimming spot.

Sikia (Image source)

Agia Kiriaki
Kalogries

Andros

Andros (Image source)

Andros is the northernmost island of the Cyclades. Rich nature combined with the abundant waters and the peculiar terrain gives Andros a special Cycladic character.

Beaches

Fellos
San Petros
Golden Sand

Restaurants - Endochora - Oti Kalo - Ta Mpinelikia - Ta Skalakia

Kimolos

Agios Georgios beach, Kimolos (Image source)

The island is located next to Milos and considered one of the least crowded islands of the Cyclades. If you are hopping islands around the Cyclades, Kimolos is an interesting stop to consider. It is perfect for small trips for someone seeking an off-the-beaten path destination in the Greek islands.

Beaches

Agios Georgios
Aliki
Bonatsa

Restaurants - Meltemi - Postali - To Kyma

Sporades Islands

Skopelos

Panormos beach at Skopelos island in Greece (Image source)

If your holiday priorities are to relax and enjoy natural beauty, then make your way to Skopelos in the Sporades. You will witness layer upon layer of green shades make a stunning vista, pine trees stretching out for the seashore, hidden coves with fishing boats, and winding paths through dense forests. And.. its the island where the famous Mamma Mia movie was filmed.

Beaches

Panormos
Stafilos
Hovolo
Perivoliou

Restaurants

Agnanti
Stafilos
Kymata

Things to do

Visit church of Agios Ioannis Kastri - The small church of Agios Ioannis is located in the region of Kastri northern Skopelos. This lovely church stands on top of a rock and provides an amazing view to the coasts of Skopelos and to Alonissos. This small church gained a huge reputation after the Hollywood movie Mamma Mia was released where many scenes from the wedding were actually filmed there. The impressive rock is linked to the rest of the island through a narrow path with 110 steps carved into the stone. A small beach is formed right beneath the rock and it gets pretty crowded in summer. The interior of the church has beautiful icons and old ecclesiastical items to see.

Church of Agios Ioannis (Image source)

Painting courses - Skopelos Art offers painting classes during the spring and summer months for people of all levels of experience, from absolute beginners to those who have previous experience looking to refresh or enhance their skills in a new environment.
Cultural events

Alonnisos

Votsi beach (Image source)

On the western side of the Aegean, on the edge of the Sporades, you’ll find one of the less commercialized islands, Alonnisos. Charming and pure, its green landscape and beautiful beaches with crystal-clear water make it the perfect destination for a relaxing holiday in Greece. If you’re looking for a quiet vacation, ensconced in nature, you need look no further. Unspoiled and authentic, it discreetly lets the wind share its secrets.

Beaches

Restaurants

Elaiwnas
Corali
Bistro Cafe Helios

Tip from a local - Don't forget to buy some "fouskakia" (traditional donuts), "hamalia" (triangle shaped sweets with delicious staffing sprinkled with castor sugar) and mouth watering almond delicatessen, the so-called "amigdalota" to offer to your beloved ones back home!

Skiathos

Lalaria beach

Skiathos, the most cosmopolitan island in the Northern Sporades, is truly a paradise on earth, with lush pine forests and crystal-clear waters. Despite the rapid growth in tourism here in recent decades, the island is still unspoiled and blessed with more than 60 beautiful beaches. When you add in its bustling nightlife, it is only natural that the island attracts thousands of young visitors every year!

Beaches

Koukounaries
Lalaria
Banana
Kastro
Lechouni

Restaurants

Limanaki Tavern
Marmita
Platanos
Scuna

Things to do

Visit Skiathos town: The island's capital and its port is the town of Skiathos; it stretches from the beach to the hills. The port is divided into two by the beautiful little peninsula Bourtzi. The city is vibrant all summer long and offers every visitor a variety of options in dining, entertainment, accommodation, and anything else needed. Skiathos town is ideal for walks in its narrow alleys, as well as for shopping and its intense nightlife.
Visit Bourtzi: Don’t miss the chance to visit Bourtzi, a small peninsula with lush vegetation where the ruins of a Venetian fortress still stand. Today it is one of the most romantic spots in Skiathos thanks to its densely planted pine trees and stunning views of the archipelago.
Go scuba-diving: Diving in Skiathos waters is a unique experience. You will be able to dive with experienced guides on reefs, wrecks, caves such as the Cave of Poseidon with red corals and other attractions of the Aegean's seabed.
Go mountain biking: During the months from May to October and any day of the week you can try mountain biking in Skiathos. Skiathos island offers trails among lush vegetation with trails from 3-5 hours.

Dodecanese Islands

Leros

Leros (Image source)

A beautiful island of the Dodecanese, worthy of its long distance from Athens. Characterized by its natural beauty, Leros has managed to be beautiful with its own uniquely recognizable, but exceptional style.

Beaches

Alinta
Paradeisos
Kokkina

Nightlife

Faros
Meltemi
Yolo
Thalassa

Halki

Halki (Image source)

Halki is a lesser-known Greek island that even many Greeks don't know about. It offers an amazing scenery and beauty and it is not packed with tourists. What more can you ask?

Beaches

Kania Beach
Ftenagia
Potamos

Restaurants

Magefseis
Valantis
Remezzo

Astypalaia

Panoramic view of Astypalaia (Image source)

Astypalaia, widely known also as "Butterfly of the Aegean" because of it's butterfly like shape, is an island of the Dodecanese which is definitely worth visiting. If you have a glance at the map of Greece you will notice that Astypalaia island is exactly between the island chains of Dodecanese and Cyclades. This unique position makes Astypalaia an extraordinary cultural mixture of those two island chains and the culture that follows them. Astypalaia is an island that both Greek and foreign tourists prefer for peaceful and family moments during which you can relax both physically and mentally.

Beaches

Kaminakia
Vatses
Pera Gialos
Mple Limanaki

Food

In the island, you can find plenty types of fish, honey, cheese, and meat. The best delicacies that you can find are Pougkia (a type of cheese pie with Kopanisti (spicy cheese) and honey), Lampriano (goat filled with rice and its liver) and many other local and greek tastes.

Rhodes

The island of the sun (image source)

Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is also the island-group's historical capital. The main town of the island and seat of the municipality is Rhodes. The city of Rhodes has a population of approximately 90,000 inhabitants.
It is located northeast of Crete, southeast of Athens and just off the Anatolian coast of Turkey. Rhodes' nickname is The island of the Knights, named after the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who once conquered the land.

The Colossus of Rhodes was considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. This giant bronze statue was documented as once standing at the harbour. It was completed in 280 BC and destroyed in an earthquake in 224 BC. No trace of the statue remains today.

Beaches

Kallithea Springs - This is the location where the classic movie "The Guns of Navarone" was filmed.
Tsambika - Very warm and shallow waters, perfect for families and kids to play.
Lindos - Located below the castle and graphic village of Lindos.
Anthony Quinn Bay - One of the most beautiful places to go snorkelling.

Food

Try Philosophia Beach Taverna in Pefkos for romantic views of the bay and a chance to dip your toes in the water.
In a similar vein is Dapapa on Kavos Beach, where the seafood is glorious with a backdrop to match.
Ambrosia Restaurant in Lindos is sheer foodie heaven.
Taverna Mimakos
Rock n' Roll

Kastellorizo

Kastellorizo (Image source)

The journey to Kastellorizo is a very lengthy one, but the scene that will welcome the daring travellers is absolutely worth it. Colourful houses all over the place, their reflections shining through the crystal-clear waters. The scenery is amazing and magical. The island was destroyed by both world wars and was rebuilt again and again. Most of its old inhabitants migrated to Australia and now only 492 people live the whole year there.

Beaches

You can dive at the amazing sea at Mandraki, Plakes or at the port. There you can find many stairs and floating docks so that you can easily get in the sea and enjoy the, undoubtedly, cold waters. In addition, while you are swimming you will not be alone, but you will get some company. Sea turtles (Oh yes) will come near you as they have gotten used to the presence of people and they will come to you to play with them.

Food

Akrothalassi: The local tavern has many traditional dishes that vary from day to day. Amazing view and really affordable choices.
Lazarakis: Lazarakis restaurant is the place where all shipowners meet and eat. Fresh fish and lobsters are the specials and, as one might suspect, the prices are pretty high.
Ta Platania: This famous and traditional tavern is located at the village’s square and attracts a lot (well they are not that many but still) local people.

Things to do

Blue Cave: One of the most beautiful caves of Greece. You can reach the cave with a small boat; the opening is really small and sometimes you can’t even see it. The tourists get in a very small boat and then they lie down so they can go through the opening. But then they come across one of the most magical images and sceneries they have ever encountered. Stalactites in combination with the water and the sunlight create a turquoise and green scenery that will mesmerize you and you will definitely remember it for your whole life.

North East Aegean Islands

Ikaria

Iero beach (Image source)

Ikaria is a Greek island of North-East Aegean. Agios Kyrikos is the capital of the island and is located in the north-east coast of the island. The second most developing port is Eydilos in the north coast. The island is named after the son of Daidalos, Ikaros, whose body was found in the coast of this island.

Average lifetime of people that live in Ikaria is 88.1 years, surpassing the country's average of 79.8.

Beaches Seychelles beach

Seychelles - One of the most beautiful beaches of the island. It was created hundreds of years ago from rocks crashing during the cutting of a tunnel that was leading towards Magganiti village.
Iero - It is usually a quiet beach that not many people know.
Mesakti - The most famous beach of the island which you must visit if you pass by the island. The view to the iconic little church of Analipseos in the port is what makes the beach a must-visit.

Sightseeing

Xristos Rachwn : An informal rule says that the stores open after 9 in the night, as the locals work in the morning cropping their fields. This custom is still going on and Raches is unofficially the heart of Ikaria.
Mounte Monastery: Is a female monastery established in the 13th century with really iconic old pictures. It is located close to Xristos Rachwn in a magnificent green area with amazing view. If it happens you visit this monastery it is worth trying the handmade treats of the nun.
Koskina Castle: It is located in the center of Ikaria. This castle is also named castle of Nikarias because once is was the most important fort of the island. Having a 10 minute walk you will see the main fort that the legend says it was occupied only once.

Saronic Gulf Islands

Aegina

All the islands of the Saronic gulf - Aegina, Salamis, Poros - are very close destinations for just a day-trip as the port of Piraeus, Athen's port, lies on the northeastern edge of the gulf. In combination with the beauty that Aegina offers, if you just came in Athens for a couple of days, don't hesitate to go to Piraeus, buy a ferry-boat ticket and travel to Aegina.

Spetses

Dapia, Spetses (Image sourcehttps://www.discovergreece.com/en/greek-islands/spetses)

In ancient times, it was known as Pityoussa, and later as Petses. Spetses is an ideal destination for a quick retreat, while it has the ability to make you feel special and exclusive. Once you travel to Spetses you will experience horse-drawn carriages, people riding their bicycles as motorcycles are forbidden by the local authorities. The island of Spetses has forever been a favourite destination for high-society, as reflected in the smart cafes, art stores and stylish boutiques that populate the Old port. Luxury and local tradition coexist on this beautiful island.

Food

La Luz
Fish Tavern Patralis
Bluefield Burger Company
On the Verandah

Hydra

Hydra (Image source)

Hydra is a picturesque island close to Athens known for the stone mansions and the lack of cars or other motor vehicles. The transport is done on foot, by boat or riding a donkey. Strolling across the island is fully recommended if you are a fan of walking in the nature seeing the sea from above. The towns and villages close to Hydra Town that you can visit are Vlichos and Mandraki but there are also Zogkeika, Limnioza, Klimaki, Zogeri, Molos and Palamidas further away.

Beaches

Vlichos
Kaminia
Hydroneta

Restaurants

Omilos
Bratsera
Kai Kremmidi

Agistri

Agistry (Image source)

Agistri is the diamond of the Argosaronic Gulf full of pine trees and crystal clean waters. It is about one hour away from Piraeus Port.

Beaches

Megalochori
Skala
Dragonera

Restaurants

Aktaion
Aponisos

So, what you are waiting for? Choose a destination and pack your bags. Nature is waiting.

Graffiti: Social Expressions of Athens

2018-06-23T18:11:00-04:00

Graffiti is a social expression. The street art reflects the thoughts of society in general. By observing them, we can grasp the social sentiment at the grass-roots level.

Athens is not really known on graffiti landscape as Berlin, Buenos Aires, or New York; however, there is a lot to explore and admire for a graffiti hunter in Athens.

Here are some gems that I found. Enjoy :)

The world is being created by different people

Black and White and colourful chemistry

System of a Fraud

Abstractified

The digital age

Discrete aging

Men at work

A video game frame

The matrix

The war of love

Not so sweet dreams

The subtle. (It is an interesting one. The original painter did not create the teeth!! The subtle change flipped the meaning.)

The helping hand

The fear

A devil

The battleground and survival

The supreme Parthenon

The roots of thoughts

Character crafting

Where to find graffiti in Athens? Well, I clicked these shots mostly in and around center of Athens (Psyrri, Exarchia, Kerameikos). Some of the pictures are from Nea Ionia. Others have posted the famous routes to find graffiti in Athens.

Taksidiotis - Athens Travel Guide by the Greeks

2018-03-11T18:14:00-04:00

This list is compiled by Greek students as one of the assignments for 'Software Engineering in Practice' course in the spring 2018 that I designed to make them learn Git and GitHub. The original repository can be found here; I am presenting the curated version of the repository with some of my own additions (well, I do now have some Greek threads in my personality so still would like to keep the title unchanged :)).

Athens is the capital city of Greece and one of the biggest tourist attractions in the Europe. It is one of the world's oldest cities with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years. Athens is a vibrant city with unlimited choices and contrasts to fall in love with. Here’s a list of the sights, places and activities that will make your Athenian experience unforgettable.

City of Athens - A Portrait of a Changing Metropolis from Alexandros Maragos.

Public transport

Athens has metro trains, buses, as well as trams to commute within the city.

From/To Airport

Follow the trains sign after coming out from airport. You would find ticket vending machines as well as manned ticket windows to assist you. You may take metro line 3 (Aghia Marina – Douk. Plakentias - Athens International Airport) to reach to the city center from Airport. It runs every 30 minutes from 6:30 AM to 11:30 PM every day of week.

You may also take buses to reach to city center. You can find the bus stop in the right side after you come out from one of the airport exits. X95 bus will take you from the airport to Syntagma (city center). More details about other routes can be found here.

Commuting within Athens

You may buy an anonymous Athena card if you are going to use public transport a lot during your Athens visit. You need to swipe your card to ticket machines before entering the platform zone. In buses, there are at least two blue color card reading machines. You don't have to swipe when you disembark from the bus or leave the train station.

Climate

Athens has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. The dominant feature of Athens' climate is alternation between prolonged hot and dry summers and mild to cool winters with moderate rainfall. With an average of 416.8 millimetres (16.41 in) of yearly precipitation, rainfall occurs largely between the months of October and April. July and August are the driest months, where thunderstorms occur sparsely once or twice a month.

Museums/Sightseeing

Acropolis It's impossible to come to Athens and not visit the Acropolis. The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historic significance, the most famous being the Parthenon.
Acropolis museum Your walk to Acropolis and the monument of Parthenon can ideally match with a visit to the Acropolis Museum. The Acropolis Museum is an archaeological museum focused on the findings of the archaeological site of the Acropolis of Athens. The museum was built to house every artifact found on the rock and on the surrounding slopes, from the Greek Bronze Age to Roman and Byzantine Greece.
The Pnyx The Pnyx is a picturesque location under the Acropolis where many distinguished Greeks addressed the people. Themistocles, Pericles, and Kolokotronis were some among them.
Athens War MuseumDespite the fact that Greece was the center of Science and Art in the ancient world, Greeks had to fight many wars. Regardless of its causes or its tolls, every war is a matter of study. Athens War Museum is a place where artifacts from every war fought by the Greeks are gathered. Some of them predate even the iron age.
The National Archaeological Museum is a must if you want to explore the educational part of Athens and Greek history. (location)
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center If you want to rest and take a walk into one of Athens' most beautiful spots SNFCC) is your place. Located in the bay of Phaliron, includes new facilities for the National Library of Greece and the National Opera, as well as the 210,000 m² Stavros Niarchos Park.
Athens is famous for its spectacular sights from the height, its picturesque neighbourhoods and its natural beauty, where it is still preserved. If you want to fit as much as you can in only one view, your best bet is to grab a beer and get to one of the many hills around the city. The options are plenty, but some great alternatives would be the following:
Technopolis - Located within touching distance of Syntagma Square and the Monastiraki Flea Market, Technopolis is an event and art space within an old natural gas processing plant. It has sort of a MoMA PS1 vibe. The industrial museum is open to the public Tuesday through Sunday. Visitors learn about the work conditions in the old plant and its experiential approach to its operations during the 19th century. Most Athenians, though, will simply tell you to check the venue's events calendar for any upcoming concerts, parties, DJ sets and exhibits.
Benakis Museum Antonis Benakis, a politician's son born in Alexandria, Egypt, in the late 19th century, endowed what is perhaps the finest museum in Greece. Its three floors showcase impeccable treasures from the Bronze Age up to WWII. Especially gorgeous are the Byzantine icons and the extensive collection of Greek regional costumes, as well as complete sitting rooms from Macedonian mansions, intricately carved and painted. But Benakis had such a good eye that even the agricultural tools are splendid.
Delphi Archaeological Museum Apart from Athens, if you are in Greece and you have decided to visit parts of the rest of the country as well, one of the most important and most visited Greek museums is the Delphi Archaeological Museum. This museum displays some of the most valuable ancient Greece's surviving treasures, like Heniokhos (also known as Charioteer of Delphi), the Sphinx of Naxos and many more. Delphi was considered to be the navel (or center) of the earth and should definitely be one of the top priority destinations of every visitor. Its rich collections comprise primarily architectural sculpture and statues donated to the sanctuary reflecting its religious, political and artistic activities from its early years in the 8th century BC to its decline in Late Antiquity.
Rhodes Palace Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes is a medieval castle in the city of Rhodes, on the island of Rhodes in Greece. It is one of the few examples of Gothic architecture in Greece. The site was previously a citadel of the Knights Hospitaller that functioned as a palace, headquarters and fortress.

Restaurants/Tavernas

Kuzina In the heart of Athens, under the shade of the temple of Hephaestus on the picturesque Adrianou Street, lies the unique restaurant Kuzina. The old mansion where the restaurant is hosted keeps a hidden surprise for its guests: the breathtaking view to Acropolis from its Tarazza! Based on modern Greek cuisine, Aris Tsanaklidis, the renowned chef, creates a unique menu that makes Kuzina stand out for combining traditional cuisine and culinary inventiveness.
Varoulko Varoulko restaurant is located in one of the most beautiful places, the Mikrolimano marina, in front of the sea, has easy access from downtown Athens & Piraeus and provides its visitors an elegant atmosphere and an outstanding view.
Thanasis taverna is one of the most iconic tavernas in Athens, with its trademark dish being kebabs. It is a nice place to go after a walk in the center of Athens and enjoy a meal near the Monastiraki Square.
Kalyvia Thorikou Just 33 km east of Athens, there is a village named Kalyvia Thorikou. This village is lucky enough to have plenty of simply amazing tavernas. There one might find some of the tastiest delicacies Greece has to offer to meat lovers the world around. The most iconic of them all should be the famous kontosouvli and this is just the tip of the iceberg as you can try tasty grilled goat chops and many many more!!!
Fetticio Don't forget to go to Fetticio in Glyfada to taste delicious crepes. The best crepe on the menu is number 49! It only costs 5 euros, and is covered with chocolate, crushed cookie (like a graham cracker), bananas, strawberries, and inside is ice cream. This is the crepe called "49" (It is called "49" because it is the number 49 on the menu)
Buffalo Gelato In Glyfada, you should definetely visit Buffalo Gelato, to taste the most special ice-cream in many different and unusual flavors and of course their famous Buffle cone which is a waffle in the shape of cone filled with chocolate, ice-cream and any other ingredient that you want!
Paterasgenaiou In Piraeus, the country's biggest port, 20 minutes from Athens by train, you can taste the best, biggest burger in the whole town. People from all the regions of Athens arrive here to taste it. So don't forget to visit Barbeque!
Agora Restaurant includes great tasty food with unique atmosphere, great service and music. Dish not to miss: Salmon Spaghetti with Vodka Sauce.
Logo Timis The various Greek beaches not only benefit us with their waters, where we can swim and cool off the hot days of summer, but also with the organisms that live there. Therefore you should definitely visit a fish tavern, like 'Logo Timis' in Likovrisi. It is a very clean place with a very hospitable owner, and his wife is the best cook ever. Try the 'regosalata' plate, it is just awesome!
Christoforos When it comes to Greek traditional food, "Christoforos" restaurant is the right place to visit! A cozy atmosphere and plenty of tasty plates, such as lamp, gyros, souvlaki, mousaka, all in affordable prices! The quality and quantity won't disappoint you!
Juicy Grill was born for a reason. To serve pleasure, taste, bliss and delight. If you really like burgers you have to visit this burger joint. With homemade buns and sauces and high quality meat. One of the best in town.
The BALTHAZAR occupies a unique neoclassical building of 1897 with one of the few remaining green gardens on the outskirts of the city center. It works continuously since 1973 and in recent years the kitchen runs the famous chef Christoforos Peskias who takes great care of your gastronomic experience. His cuisine is characterized as Mediterranean with fusion shades. A special sushi menu is also served during the summer season.
Thanasis While in Athens , you shouldn't miss the opportunity to visit Thanasis, one of the oldest kebab taverns in Athens. Located in Monastiraki square and dating back to 1964, Thanasis is the perfect place to eat a traditional greek kebab!
Ciao Dont forget to visit the Italian restaurant named Ciao. Located in Pagrati, is the best place for pasta, pizza and many other italian recipes, for sure you will not be dissapointed!
Wafflehouse offers an extremely wide variety of homemade ice-cream flavours and delicious fresh baked waffles. It is located in Vouliagmeni and there you can enjoy your dessert while gazing at the mesmerizing sea!
Cabezon A hidden place in the center of Athens is the Restaurant-Cafe-Bar named Cabezon("Καμπεθόν"). This place is unique, you won't find an open door with a big logo outside. It is a house with a garden, and you can either drink your coffee in the morning, eat a meal in the afternoon or party with some techno vibes at night. (location)
Avli For me the best place at the center of Athens is "Avli", which is located at Psirri, Athens. If you are lucky enough to find the tiny door, open it and you will feel like you've entered the square of a small island village with white walls and blue shutters. It's the place were locals go to eat Greek traditional plates, all homemade dishes, and drink raki, tsipouro, ouzo, beer and wine. Despite all the above mentioned, what I personally love the most is the ambience of the place, which makes you forget you are a stranger and someway unites you with other people. (location)
Nancysweethome located in Monastiraki. Juicy chocolates, loafed strawberries, oriental kazan dibi and carnouses, mastitis creos, syropiasta and all the serbets (for the heavy cribs), arrived at the most relaxed and cute Glycopolis in Athens.
Atitamatos - Greek/Mediterranean Cuisine. Excellent food and service. Moderate price.
Feyrouz - Lebanese Cuisine. Lovely Food. Cheap. Self service.

Cafe

Little Tree Books & Coffee Cozy and Charming place. Excellent service. (location)
Madeira This coffee & cocktails spot will make you feel that you are on a greek island. Great for Summer months.(location)

Bars

Pagkrati If you locate yourself in the urban area called Pagkrati ("Παγκράτι") and you want to have a beverage or a drink, you can visit Chelsea Hotel. This spot has an amazing cup of coffee and awesome cocktails at night. Anyone that likes an exquisite and cult spot, would love this place. Warning, it gets really crowded at night. (location)
Speakeasy In the heart of the town, Speakeasy is a must visit bar with live classic jazz music and great decoration and tables inspired by 80's.
Clumsies In the top 10 in annual ratings of world's best bars, The Clumsies bar is one of the hottest bars downtown. 2017 list of world's best bars
six d.o.g.s If it's summer and you are in the capital of Greece, a good choice to spend your night is a bar in the city center called "six d.o.g.s". In its garden, you can relax and enjoy good music.
A for Athens Next to Monastiraki metro station, on the sixth floor of a small hotel, there is a rooftop cocktail bar called "A for Athens". It is now one of Athens's top after-dark venues. Outrageously popular with locals and visitors alike, it has a stylish open-air lounge terrace with amazing view of the floodlit Acropolis.
Peek a Bloom Peek a Bloom is the perfect destination for a night out or coffee. It's environment, innovative cocktails linked to names and stories, amazing coffee made with on the spot roasted beans and healthy snacks are the reason it is one of the top spot for Athenians and tourists. (location)
AthenStyle Don't miss stunning views of the Parthenon from the famous Athens Rooftop Bar called "AthenStyle", the best spot for meeting people and chilling after a long day sightseeing. Enjoy all year happy hours cheap drinks and live the AthenStyle experience!
Mike's Irish Pub You can't have fun without a karaoke night! Find the coolest one @ Mike's Irish Pub and drink the best of whiskey. Cozy atmosphere!
Aigaleo For a more traditional approach try the night life of Aigaleo. On its central road there are many Greek bars (mezedopolia) to choose from. The wine is good but the food is better. You will be surprised by the quantities, there is no way you return home being hungry!!
MoMix The first bar in Athens which combined molecular gastronomy with bartending, creating special cocktails for guests who like experiments.
Opened in November 2012 and soon conquered the Athenians, and offers cocktails in alternative forms, in addition to liquid. The Momix team with lots of imagination and playfulness, shuffles foams, powders and jellies and serves the most original cocktails in cups, plates and bowls! (location)
Intrepid Fox If you are in the mood for rock and metal music the place in Athens for you to go is Intrepid Fox in Gazi square. A great collection of beers cocktails and shots that will give you a night to remember!
360 Cocktail bar 360 Cocktail bar from its beautiful rooftop, offers a panoramic view of the city of Athens and an ideal place to take photos of the Acropolis. It is located right next to Monastiraki Metro station.
Tiki Tiki Bar Athens is a well known treasure for the ones visiting the Greek capital, offering some genuine tropical vibes near the Acropolis, Odeon of Herodes Atticus and Athens Central square of Syntagma.Tiki Bar Athens is a place that it's spirit and...high quality spirits can only be found in Quentin Tarantino movies. Given the decoration with Rock and Roll, Tiki, Dia de Los Muertos and B Movies, it's unique style matches the unique cocktails and it's authentic perspective in music from 1920's up to date.
Baba au Rum As strange as it sounds, this Greek, rum-focused cocktail joint has actually been named one of the world's 50 best bars. The cozy spot has a groovy 1950s feel and is located on a small, pedestrian street close to Syntagma Square. With tables outside and no cars to worry about, visitors tend to simply take over the street, turning the small bar into an awesome block party. It boasts a ridiculous selection of rums from Cuba, Trinidad, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the list goes on. While there is a set cocktail menu featuring everything from Tiki drinks to non-rum varietals like Pimm's Cups and Bloody Marys, patrons can simply tell the bartender what they're in the mood for and they'll mix something unique up especially for you.

Night life

Asylum Next to the station of Metro Metaksourgeio, there is a club called Asylum ("Άσυλο"), it doesn't have any logo or any fancy entrance but you can spot it because is the only place that you will have youth outside of it. It has uncommon decoration and a projector that shows cartoonish videos on the wall. The music is always alternative or techno and it has cheap drinks.
Toyroom Enjoy R&B and house music while enjoying your favorite drink at "Toyroom" in the center of Athens.
From Hollywood to Athens! The best night club in the city. (location)
Plintirio Bar If you want to hear the best Greek music and party like a Greek then Plintirio Bar is your destination. Located at Gazi (the area near the city center where most clubs are located) is the perfect choice for you.
Cinderella Located in Kolonaki, Cinderella is a disco-club where anyone feeling nostalgic for the 1970s will find solace. With its psychedelic d?cor, relaxed vibe and 1970s- and 1980s-oriented playlist, Cinderella quickly became a nightlife hub in Greece’s capital. As the club attracts a lot of people, make sure to reserve a table or come ‘early’; then all you have to do is get ready to surrender to the fun vibe and dance the night away.
Crust Located in Monastiraki, Crust Athens is an underground club for people who want to party till the morning hours. It's also recommended for those who love pizza due to the fact that it serves great and worth-the-money pizza.
Box Athens Box Athens is a place to enjoy live clubbing. Located in Gazi this live stage has an impressive entrance with lights and mirrors which is a popular photo spot. Every Friday and Saturday Box hosts Melisses one of the best pop bands in Greece.
Kioumprik Located in Excarcheia, Kioumprik is a bar that you should totally visit! It plays many kind of music such as reggae, hip hop, punk, rock, stoner and more! the people who work there also run it with an assemply, so that they all can have part in its management. There is no relationship of employers - employees something difficult to find in a capitalistic country.

Islands

Crete Chania is a great choice for you is to spend the summer. A city that combines wonderful nightlife as well as landscapes and well-known beaches. Here are my experiences with Chania, Crete Another great city of Crete is Heraklion in which you can visit a lot of well-known sights such as Knossos, Koules and Fountain Morozini.
Santorini Santorini is the ideal island to enjoy the most spectacular sunset, alleys and a beautiful white and blue architecture of houses. It's famous about the romantic sunset and the amazing view from all the places. Here is how I enjoyed my trip to Santorini.
Spetses Beautiful nature, perfect beaches and a complex history - Spetses is an island that has all three. It's close enough to Athens to be enjoyed as a day trip and has enough varied sites and activities to keep you completely occupied for longer trips.
Rhodes Rhodes is a unique island that combines History from different eras of time. It has ancient Greek ruins, Medieval structures, Italian structures from the Italian occupation of Rhodes, Turkish structures etc. It is well known for its sightseeings and landscape variety, which makes it one of the most visited destination in Europe.
Lesvos The island of hidden harmony; a unique destination, recognised as a member of the UNESCO Global Geopark Network, with long tradition and history, inherent contrasts of natural beauty, and delightful flavours with olive oil and ouzo in the spotlight!
Corfu Corfu is probably the most beautiful Ionian Island with so many exciting places to see. It feels a lot like being in Italy, people are always singing and the food is delicious. Don't forget to visit the Achileon, Sissi's holiday palace.
Lefkada Amazing beaches, easily accessible as you can travel there by car. You can combine your vacation there by visiting other Ionian islands. Lefkada is quite a peaceful island with fewer tourists than other Greek islands.
Serifos An island with wild beauty and relaxing atmosphere. Not many people visit this island per year, therefore is perfect for those who want to run away from the hustle and bustle of Athens. The beaches are mainly sandy with crystal clear water. If you ever get the chance to go to the island, don't forget to go to the castle and wait for the sunrise. The view will reward you.
Mykonos Famous for its nightlife, though Mykonos has a lot more to offer. Beautiful and exotic rocky beaches, well-known restaurants offering traditional plates, mysterious and wonderful alleys. Mykonos combine both the quiet and the frostbite memories you want to add in your summer vacations!
Skiathos Skiathos is among the most popular islands of Greece. Famous for the golden beaches, the green nature and the vivid atmosphere, Skiathos Greece is a favourite destination for both youth and families. The most popular beaches are located on the southern side of the island, including the famous bay of Koukounaries. However, very impressive is the exotic beach of Lalaria, accessible only by boat trip that also goes to the Medieval Castle of the island. The Town is the centre of activities on the island, where visitors head in the evenings to enjoy a relaxing drink. From Skiathos island, visitors can make day excursions to Skopelos and Alonissos, the other islands of Sporades.
Amorgos One of the most impressive Cycladic islands, Amorgos, with its azure waters, unique landscape and picturesque villages is the perfect choise for relaxing holidays in the Aegean.
Milos One of the most beautiful islands of Greece. Its volcanic activity in combination with the turquoise water make a unique landscape that every tourist should visit. Milos is ideal for young couples and a private means of transport would be recommended.
Ios If you want to party a lot and live a wonderful experience in the Greek islands then Ios should be your choice. Ios means flower and according to the ancient tradition, Ios was the homeland of Homer’s mother and the final resting place of the great epic poet. It is particularly famous for the wonderful beaches, the picturesque village of Chora and certainly the intense nightlife that attracts mostly young crowds.
Samothraki in my opinion the most magical island in Greece, Samothraki. The moment you reach it, you fall in love with it. It has magical nature with waterfalls, forests and beaches. Also the people you meet there are have a special sense of freedom and hospitality.
Astypalaia The butterfly-shaped island located exactly where the Dodecanese meets the Cyclades, with the bluer-than-blue seas, the crystalline waters and the beautiful beaches is for any visitor a unique discovery. Slide into the crystal waters of Astypalea, enjoy the unique local tastes and experience the thrill of having the best holidays of your life.

Natural Resorts

Near the city of Volos (in the Magnisia regional unit), one can find the magical mountain of Pilio. According to myth, this is where the gods used to live during the summer, and with good reason!!! The beauty of Pilio is truly something to behold since it is (possibly) the Greece's nature at it's absolute best! Combining breath-taking mountain forrests and sunny beaches with clear blue waters, this place is a must visit. And most importantly, do not be fooled by the beautiful sea into thinking that this is a place to only visit during the summer. If you are a friend of snow and skiing, just don't think twice.

Theatre

Theater of the rocks Just about 40 minutes from the city center, in a breathtaking location,theater of the rocks or Theatro Vrachon is located.
Piraeus If you like a bit of art visit the Municipal Theatre in Piraeus. In the heart of the city, reachable by many means of transport it often hosts rather interesting plays with Greek well-known actors.
Odeon of Herodes Atticus A stone theatre structure located on the southwest slope of the Acropolis of Athens, Greece. The building was completed in 161 AD and then renovated in 1950. Since then it has been the main venue of the Athens Festival, which runs from May through October each year, featuring a variety of acclaimed Greek as well as International performances.
Ebros During your stay in Athens, you should totally visit Ebros!It is an theatre in Psurri, which is occupied by a group of people. They have regular meetings where they organise everything about the theatre 's operation, the events, the concerts the parties and the plays. The good thing about Ebros is that its logic is that all its members are equal, without any boss or individual property.
To Treno Sto Rouf Opened in 1997, the venue is housed in an Italian passenger wagon dating back to 1950. Though small, the stage is fully-equipped and hosts lectures, musical performances and of course, theatrical works. Plus, the wagon is equipped with a mechanism that stimulated the comforting motion of a train. To Treno Sto Rouf’s agenda is rich and varied with educational programs, theatrical performances for adults and children, exhibitions and other cultural events. This little hidden gem is located less than 10 minutes from the nightlife hub of Gazi and certainly deserves a visit. Whether you are in the mood for a play, a performance or simply a drink in an unusual venue, To Treno Sto Rouf is undeniably one of the best-kept secrets in Athens.

Cinema

Cine Thisseon With a direct view to the one and only Acropolis, Cine Thisseon is a classic summer open air cinema in Athens to check out. Showing films since 1935, it can be found on the paved walkway that connects Thission with Filoppapou Hill. Typically, the operation of the cinema begins the last week of April or the first week of May and ends in late October. (location)
Cine Dexameni A great choice if to watch a movie if you're in Greece during the summer would be Cine Dexameni. Located right under mount Lycabettus, it is an open air cinema, with a very retro feel, which can give you a taste of what Greece used to look like many decades ago.

Extreme sports

If you're looking for an adrenaline rush the southern suburbs of Varkiza and Vouliagmeni offer lessons in many extreme sports such as: SUP, rowing, wind surf, jet ski, sailing and many more. (location)
Bungee Jumping: If you want to feel happiness through the absolute meaning of freedom, this is the place to go. The power of the ability to “fly” everywhere, will definitely rise your adrenaline levels. "Zulu Bungy" have made their personal need of generously sharing smiles to people so as to make their world more beautiful. The spot that has been chosen to set up the appropriate facilities is one of the most magnificent works in the world. The Isthmus is the main strategic point of the Greek area and one of the most important works in East Mediterranean. Its tunneling has been a significant issue since the ancient times as the creation of the canal would solve a lot of problems and would facilitate the navigation and the trade. See what it looks like.
Rafting Ioannina The famous Zagori, the famous Tzoumerka and wider region of Epirus are waiting to enchant you with the most beautiful rivers in Greece, virgin green forests, huge gorges, canyons and majestic mountains and endless rare natural beauties! Equipment required for the activities of Rafting and Canoeing is provided (uniforms neoprene, life jackets, raincoats, helmets, paddles and neoprene shoes) to conduct a safe route. In every activity your experiences will be captured (photographs - video go-pro camera). Your stay in the region will be very pleasant and helpful, as are available numerous hotels and apartments that can meet your various needs in both areas of Zagori and Tzoumerka and the wider area of Ioannina.

Graffiti

You may find many hidden gems of graffiti in streets of Athens. Some examples can be found here.

Top Places to See Street Art in Athens:

Pireos Right next to a busy street, try not to get run over by a car while admiring the panels of street art that line this area. If you’re feeling more adventurous, head to Leonidou and Keramikou Streets and pretty much anywhere in the surrounding area. Once super-sketch and now only mildly sketch, find a lot of great pieces here too.
Gazi Not just for nightlife anymore. Come here and around the Technopolis area (an industrial museum and cultural space) to get your fill of culture without all the tourists. Large, government-approved pieces may not be as exciting as undercover art, but everything here is still raw and beautiful.

Kids-activities

Attica Zoo Park If you want to spend a creative day with your children, get them to the Attica Zoo Park. Make sure you pick up a map to guide you around the park as it is huge, housing more than 350 animal species of which half are on the endangered list. Kids will love it.
Children's Museum The Children's Museum in Plaka, which operates in collaboration with the Municipality of Athens, is very popular with young visitors, who enjoy the exhibits and the possibility to develop their observation skills, learn more about the cultural heritage and understand everyday life through games. Children can play at the shops of the "Market", make their own biscuits at the "Kitchen", journey through time at the "Attic", learn about their body at the exhibit "How do I move?", experiment and play with water and much more. Children under six years love the playroom where they can play with building blocks and visitors of all ages appreciate the toyshop with original toys and handmade objects.
Allou! Fun Park The most famous theme park of Athens, located at Rentis. It offers plenty of activities for both kids and, why not, adults! Unfortunately, the only public means of transport that gets you there is bus. (location)
Hellenic Children’s Museum If you want to have fun and at the same time educate your kids visit Hellenic Children’s Museum. This museum is dedicated to kids and helps them learn in a fun way about how the world functions. A couple of examples of things they can do is to create with building materials, learn about the concepts of supply and demand in the marketplace, or even experiment with food ingredients in the kitchen.

Shopping

The Mall Athens Located at Marousi, next to the "Neratziotissa station" on the Attiki Odos motorway, it is the biggest shopping centre of Greece hosting more than 200 shopping alternatives. Apart from shopping, the Mall also hosts lots of restaurants and coffee shops, cutting-edge cinemas and leisure areas for all family members. You can get there either by train or suburban railway.
Monastiraki flea market A great place to go shopping and combining it with a stroll in one of the most beautiful places of Athens, is the Monastiraki flea market. You will find all sorts of shops just next to each other. At the end of the main market road (Ifestou), you will surely want to keep on walking towards Thissio, a place with wonderful ancient sights on your one side and many restaurants and cafes on the other, while you are talking your walk on a paved road, making the time stop and creating an unrepeatable feeling.

Other tips and tricks

Greece is a small country, so it is a good idea to travel almost all around the country and not only to one place, since you decided to travel all the way to the southern country of Europe.
If a traveller wishes to visit most of Athens' regions, it is highly recommended to use the subway instead of buses. It covers a lot of areas and is actually cheaper that most of european underground transportation systems.
There are many destinations close to Athens where you can make a daily trip, relaxing from the urban noise and air pollution. One of my favorite destinations is Nafplio, a 2-hours drive from Athens, where you can stroll in the peaceful and picturesque streets and also climb the Palamidi fortress and enjoy a breathtaking view!
A day trip in Sounion (2 hours car drive from Athens) is a nice choice for somebody who wants to escape from the capital. The temple of Poseidon and the view from up there worth the visit.
Don't forget your hat and your sunglasses!! Sunscreen is also a must (especially if you are fair-skinned)!
Never bother lining up at the main entrance of the Acropolis. There’s a back way in that has a tiny line that no one knows about. This back door is faster and more efficient than the main like that every other tourist uses. By using this alternative entrance it will save you an hour of lining up in the blazing sun.
Mobile phone data is important when you’ve stopped using paper maps. Outside the central subway stations you’ll find people set up selling sim cards with various data packs on offer. While they are looking to sell to locals – as a tourist it’s an absolute bargain for the mouth of data you get plus the ability to book bars and restaurants.
The Greeks will be more friendly and eager to help if you try to speak some Greek, too. Just a couple of words are fine, they love it when they hear a stranger speaking their language. So, say “kalimera” instead of “good morning” and “efxaristo” instead of “thank you”, and you will see some big proud smiles in their faces.

A Taxonomy of Software Smells

2017-05-29T07:04:00-04:00

Kent Beck coined the term "code smell" in the popular Refactoring book by Martin Fowler and defined it informally as certain structures in the code that suggest (sometimes they scream for) the possibility of refactoring. Since then, various smells have been reported that impair software quality in one or more ways. I attempt to prepare and present a taxonomy of software smells by cataloging, classifying, and inter-relating smell definitions present in existing literature with their references.

You may access the taxonomy here.

The taxonomy is generated by a python program that I wrote to generate html pages. I provide smell description as well as corresponding references in a specific format and supply them to the python program. The program generates required html pages with links that inter-relate the generated html pages. I used basic CSS to look the collection of the html files a little better.

This taxonomy is evolving. I plan to add many more smells (for instance, lexicon smells, performance smells, and energy smells). If you would like to point me to a (missing) smell or reference, or would like to suggest something, feel free to email to me.

Crete - Where I Lost and Found Myself at the Same Time

2017-05-20T21:56:00-04:00

I used to think that one has to be a really good photographer (or photoshoper) in order to produce stunning beach photos. Back of my mind, I was probably doubting the beauty of such beaches and believing that they are decently good but overhyped by the skills of photographers (or even photoshopers). Fortunately, my perception was wrong :)

After a nice, memorable trip to Santorini last year, we were looking for a perfect island for our holidays this summer (well..early summer). Greece presents a big confusion to us as there are many wonderful islands and it is not easy to settle for one. We decided to go to Crete following the recommendations of my Greek friends.

We don't want to go there in the peak season to avoid the crowd and steep prices. Also, based on our experience to Santorini, we want to avoid too hot whether and rather prefer a pleasant one (between 20 and 25 degrees). So, we decided to plan our trip in early May. There is one more critical decision that one has to make - where to stay in Crete? Crete is a big island; it is more than 350 KMs wide from east to west. So, if you stay in the east part you would probably not go towards west part and vice versa. Both the sides have many attractions to offer, so take a look at all the attractions around Chania, pronounced Hania (western side) and Heraklion, pronounced iˈraklio, (eastern side) and decide which side you would like to stay. We chose Chania.

Travel

One can opt for ferries to go to Crete from Athens Piraeus port. These ferries typically start in the night from Athens and arrive at Chania/Iraklio port by early morning. We chose to go to Chania via air.

Rental car

As I mentioned earlier, Crete is a big island (area: 8335 KM2). It is highly recommended to have a car to roam around if you are not planning to work from your hotel lobby.

I booked a car via a popular rental car company online. However, when we reached to Chania airport, the rental car company asked for an international driving license which was not surprizing but inconvenient for me. I do have an Indian license but not an international one. I did my bit of convincing her but she refused to give me a car (but, I understand). There were a few more desks of rental companies; I tried them one by one and one company agreed to provide me a car. Finally, I got a car (albeit, I paid 50% more money than the original car booking).

Hotel

We stayed at Cretan Dream Royal Hotel and it was perfect in many ways. It is 8 KMs away from Chania, so avoiding all the crowd but still approachable by car in a few minutes. Our room had an excellent view facing the sea. The property is maintained really well and the staff was courteous.

Random exploration

We checked into our hotel around 4 PM. In the evening, we explored nearby places on foot. We spotted many restaurants around our hotel and a shop selling the necessities. We also went to the nearby beach (just across the road) and witnessed a beautiful sunset. We concluded the day with a nice dinner. The restaurant served amazing "Cretan salad"; the Cretan taste of feta, tomatoes, olives, and capers made it great.

Sunset in Crete

Gramvousa and Balos beaches

Balos is one of the famous beaches of Crete. So, obviously, we wanted to go there. There are two ways to go there - by road and by boat. One may go there by road by going to Kissamos town and then further to Balos. However, the road after Kissamos is not at all good (and hence not recommended). The boat way is convenient; one may go to the Kissamos port and catch the boat. It is a good one-day trip since the boat starts at around 10:30 AM and comes back around 6 PM. More information can be found here.

We took the boat. It was almost full but not really crowded. The first stop was Gramvousa island. The island has a Venetian castle; however, frankly, it's only some remains. The advantage of going up is that you can enjoy the view and click some beautiful photographs.

Gramvousa island

The boat takes you to Balos from Gramvousa within 10-15 minutes. Meanwhile, you may buy some food/drinks for yourself on the boat.

Balos lived beyond my expectations. It is a lagoon thus has shallow water (from a few millimeters to a few inches). My vocabulary is insufficient to describe the beauty of the beach. The blue, green, and turquoise color hues of the water are simply awesome. Since we came to the beach via boat, we missed the opportunity to click some photos from some altitude. However, I climbed some distance to take an amazing panoramic view of the lagoon.

Balos beach

Although atmosphere temperature was perfect (around 25 degrees), water was considerably cold so one can't really enjoy the water in early May. It is the June to September period that offers hot sea water (however, you need to be ready for relatively high atmosphere temperature and very crowded places).

Elafonisi beach

One of our days at Crete, we set ourselves to a rather long car journey from our hotel to Elafonisi beach in the early morning. The route takes you through mountains and thus is quite scenic. However, one has to be very careful while driving especially at some places where the road wraps around a hill and thus one can't see who is coming from another side. Moreover, the road is scarily narrow at some places.

All this trouble is worth taking to arrive at the yet another beautiful beach. The beach is shallow similar to Balos. It is an ideal beach for kids; they can go inside the water and the parents don't have to worry about it. The shallow water was relatively warmer; as you go inside deeper water, the temperature dips.

Elafonisi beach

While returning, we (fortunately) lost our way. We moved around in unknown yet beautiful rocky terrain. After driving for some time, we reached the top of a mountain which presented a very magnificent view. Well, it's not always bad to miss a road suggested by Google Maps :)

The view from top

Chania

Chania is a small (population: just over 100K in 2011), beautiful, traditional town with a magnificent harbor. One of the days, we reached Chania in the evening. As we started reaching the harbor, the traffic started getting dense and parking space getting scarce. To avoid any surprise, we chose to park at a paid parking lot (3 Euro for 4 hours).

Chania harbor

The atmosphere of the Chania harbor is pleasant and alive. It is very calming and tranquil to sit on a bench facing water having coffee (or beer; your choice) in one hand and observing the sun to set slowly and at the same time observing smiling and happy faces. The feeling is beyond words.

Chania harbor

When the sun was about to set, we went to the end of the harbor to see the beautiful sunset and click photos. Due to some clouds, the sunset became even beautiful.

Sunset at Chania

The walking path along the harbor is full of restaurants and souvenir shops. Along with this path, there are many small boats offering a short (1-2 hour(s)) trip to nearby areas/islands. Or, if you want to feel royal, take a ride on horse and carriage. Or, just stroll on this path and you will definitely feel great. After sunset, the area presents another breath-taking night view.

Chania harbor at night

The lighthouse presents another beautiful view of the harbor.

The lighthouse of Chania

Food

Cretan food is considered best in Greece and in my opinion, it's not an exaggeration. We are vegetarian and we were amazed to find many more vegetarian options compared to a random restaurant in Athens. We had many nice preparations during our visit (such as dakos, cretan salad, boureki, and zucchini fritters/balls). I was told that many restaurants use their own produce to prepare food.

Zucchini fritters/balls

We had a distinctive experience with Tamam restaurant. It's an old restaurant and the place has a history associated with it. Tamam is derived from Turkish word Hamam which used to a large (steam) bathing place. Food at this restaurant is simply awesome. I tasted the best zucchini balls/fritters that I ever had in my life. Boureki was also great.

Cretan hospitality is quite known. All the restaurants where we had food, offered complimentary sweets or drinks (raki - a local alcoholic drink) with our bill. Plus, the staff were very polite and welcoming.

Flora

A common saying about Crete is that you can just throw any seeds in a field and nature will take care of them. I literally saw that plants were blooming without any human efforts.

Driving

In this trip, I drove around 335 KMs and I found driving in Crete fairly easy and non-stressing. The majority of the roads are wide and well-maintained. You need to be careful when you are driving in mountain area; resist your temptation to get distracted by the beauty of those mountains. Also, roads at some places in these mountains are very narrow with blind turns.

Public transport

We didn't use public transport but I saw buses running to/from Chania. You can find some more information about public transport in Crete here.

In summary, it was an amazing trip. We experienced the best beaches that we ever saw so far from our eyes. Whether it is beaches, food, tranquility, or hospitality - Crete has a lot to offer. Crete has taken my heart and I promised to myself to visit Crete again hopefully soon.

The Greek Legacy

2017-03-12T17:33:00-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, students at AUEB started a new semester. In this semester, I am assisting Prof. Spinellis as a TA for a course viz. SEIP (Software Engineering In Practice). A series of lab toturials were planned for the course. I took the first tutorial in this series on git and GitHub (slides can be found here). After the session, I gave the students an assignment - to contribute to a GitHub repository i.e., "The Greek Legacy". In the assignment, each student had to write about one contribution from Greeks to the world. My goals were not only to help them understand how they can use git and GitHub (since they supposed to contribute to a single file in the repository) but also to bring out the feeling of pride among them. The assignment not only achieved the above goals, but also prepared a summary of important Greek contributions to the world that many of us might not know.

You may find the (open-source) repository here; you are welcome to contribute more.

The rest of the article reproduces some of the notable Greek contributions collected and summarized during the above exercise.

Democracy

Democracy is a system of government in which the citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body, such as a parliament. Democracy is sometimes referred to as "rule of the majority". The origin of the idea of democracy can be traced back to the 6th century B.C.

Olympic Games

Olympic games or Olympics is the biggest international sporting events in which athletes from around the world come together to compete in a variety of games. The ancient Olympic games were held in Olympia in the honour of Zeus. The five interlocking Olympic rings represent the continents of the world (Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and Australia).

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers, typically actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence, and immediacy of the experience.
The city-state of Athens is where western theatre originated. It was part of a broader culture of theatricality and performance in classical Greece that included festivals, religious rituals, politics, law, athletics and gymnastics, music, poetry, weddings, funerals, and symposia.

Contributions to Mathematics and Physics

The Greeks produced great advancements in mathematics which are still used today. Euclid was known for the basic rules and terms of geometry. Pythagoras is famous for his theorem A^2^ + B^2^ = C^2^ for a right-angled triangle. Pythagoras also came up with the value of pie to calculate the circumference of a circle.
Similarly, Archimedes discovered the physical law of displacement. The law of displacement is when an object moves the same volume of water as the object which is placed in it. Archimedes also used levers and pulleys to move heavy objects. He once launched a fully loaded ship all by himself. Archimedes also invented the Archimedes screw, which raises water up from rivers for the irrigation of fields. In addition to discoveries in math and physics, he also invented weapons to help the Greeks fight off Roman invasion. One of those weapons was the catapult. Unfortunately, the Romans captured his city and killed him in 21 B.C.

Ancient Greek Philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC and continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Ancient Greece was part of the Roman Empire. Philosophy was used to make sense out of the world in a non-religious way. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric, and aesthetics. Many philosophers around the world agree that Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception. Alfred North Whitehead once noted: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

Marathon

The marathon is a long-distance running race with an official distance of 42.195 kilometres (26.219 miles, or 26 miles 385 yards). The event was instituted in commemoration of the fabled run of the Greek soldier Philippides, a messenger from the Battle of Marathon to Athens, who reported the victory over Persians in Aug/Sept 490 BC. It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the assembly, exclaiming νενικήκαμεν (nenikēkamen, "we have won!"), before collapsing and dying.

More than 500 marathons are held throughout the world each year, with the vast majority of competitors being recreational athletes as larger marathons can have tens of thousands of participants.

Vending Machine

The first vending machine was a construction of Heron of Alexandria (10-70 AD). He was an ancient Greek mathematician and engineer. His machine accepted a coin and then dispensed a set amount of holy water. When the coin was deposited, it fell upon a pan attached to a lever. The lever opened up a valve which let some water flow out. The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until it fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve.

Cartography

Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. It has played an important role in travel and navigation since ancient times. One of the pioneer cartographers to create the map of the world was Anaximander who made important contributions to the science of astronomy and geography.

Frappe Coffee

Frappe Coffee is an iced coffee drink with foam made by instant coffee and is usually served with milk. It was invented accidentally in 1957 in Thessaloniki,Greece by a Greek Nescafe representative and has become the most popular coffee drink for Greeks and tourists as well. The word frappe comes from French and it means to hit which is also the cause for the foam.

You may find more Greek contributions in this repository.

Revisiting LCOM

2017-02-16T19:08:00-05:00

Check out my post YALCOM and our paper for more refined information, experiments, and results.

Along with other metrics, LCOM (Lack of Cohesion in Methods) was first defined by C&K in the OOPSLA paper [1] that invented a new field of object-oriented metrics. LCOM shows the degree of lack of cohesion among methods of a class. In other words, it reveals the extent to which methods of a class works towards realizing a single responsibility. It is an important measure because it indicates whether the present set of methods should be together in a class or could be split to form two or more cohesive classes.

Have you come across a situation when the value of LCOM for a class shows a number that indicates the class is not cohesive but a manual look reveals a different story? Such an instance make you disbelieve the value provided by the metric in general. Recently, I fell in the above situation which makes me perform the following experiment.

There are many definitions of LCOM [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and the value we get depends on what method our static analysis or metric tool is using. In this experiment, I computed LCOM values based on different methods for three small cases and compare whether they match our perceived notion of cohesion.

Let me first present three examples that I am using for this experiment. I have a set of methods M₁, M₂, … and a set of instance variables V₁, V₂, … An edge between a method and a variable shows an access from the method to the variable.

Running examples of the experiment

Class shown in case (A) could be considered cohesive, case (B) shows an extreme case of a non-cohesive class, and the class in case (C) is non-cohesive.

LCOM definitions

In this section, I am reproducing various definitions of LCOM. Although, some researchers differentiated LCOM definitions by LCOM1, LCOM2, and so on, there is an inconsistency in such a tagging (i.e., some researchers refer original definition of C&K LCOM defined in 1991 as LCOM1 while some refer C&K definition of LCOM appeared in 1994 as LCOM1). Therefore, to avoid confusion, I am referring LCOM definitions by the year in which they published.

LCOM91: It is defined by Chidamber et al. [1] as follows:
Consider a class C1 with methods M₁, M₂…M_n. Let {I_i} = set of instance variables used by method M_i. There are n such sets {I₁},…{I_n}.
LCOM = the number of disjoint sets formed by the intersection of the n sets.
LCOM94: It is defined by Chidamber et al. [2] as follows:
Consider a class C1 with n methods M₁, M₂,…M_n. Let {I_i} = set of instance variables used by method M_i.
There are n such sets {I₁}, …{I_n}. Let P = {(I_i, I_j)|I_i ∩ I_j = ∅} and Q = {(I_i, I_j)|I_i ∩ I_j ≠ ∅}. If all n sets {I_i},…{I_n} are ∅ then P = ∅.
LCOM = |P| - |Q|, if |P| > |Q|
= 0 otherwise
LCOM93: It is defined by Li et al. [5] as follows:
LCOM = number of disjoint sets of local methods; no two sets intersect; any two methods in the same set share at least one local instance variable; ranging from 0 to N; where N is a positive integer.
LCOM96a: It is defined by Handerson et al. [3] as follows:
where a and m are number of attributes and methods respectively, and μ(A_j) is the number of methods accessing attribute A_j.
LCOM96b: It is defined by Handerson et al. [3] as follows:
where a and m are number of attributes and methods respectively, and μ(A_j) is the number of methods accessing attribute A_j.
LCOM95: It is defined by Hitz et al. [4] as follows:
Let X denote a class, I_x the set of its instance variables of X, and M_x the set of its methods. Consider a simple, undirected graph G_x(V, E) with
V = M_x and E = {<m,n> ∈ ∃ VXV | iI_x: (m accesses i) ^ (n accesses i)}
LCOM(X) is then defined as the number of connected components of G_x (1≤ LCOM(X) ≥ |M_x|).

Results

The following table shows computed LCOM for all three cases using the above described methods.

LCOM96a and LCOM96b are popularly used LCOM definitions (for instance, NDepend and Designite implement one of the variants). However, both of them show same LCOM value for case A and C! Class shown in case A looks more cohesive than case C. Thus if an LCOM method shows same values for both the cases, the method has a deficiency to capture the cohesiveness of a class.

Results produced by methods LCOM93 and LCOM95 are same and closer to my expectation. On the other hand, these methods do not produce normalized values.

LCOM17

Well, allow me to present a yet another LCOM computation method. It is a scaled and normalized version of LCOM95. To compute an LCOM value based on LCOM17, we need to follow the following steps:

Compute an LCOM value using LCOM95.
Offset the result of LCOM95 by -1 (since the minimum value that LCOM95 produces is 1).
Normalize the result obtained in step 2 (by dividing the outcome of step 1 by number of attributes in the class). The result is a normalized [0,1] value of LCOM.
In case, the number of attributes in the class is zero, then I would prefer to say that the LCOM cannot be computed for the class rather than assigning 0 (perfectly cohesive class).

Intuitively, this method looks good to me. A rigorous experiment is required to prove its correctness in various scenarios.

Challenges with LCOM computation

Dependence on method-attribute access: The present set of LCOM computation methods uses common attribute accesses from methods as a basis to decide whether two methods are cohesive. There are situations when this strategy doesn’t work; for example, a utility class has methods to read and write data from files and doesn’t declare any attribute. In this case, the present set of methods will produce either a 0 or a non-deterministic value.
Getters/Setters: If an LCOM computation method includes getters and setters in the analysis and treat them as methods, the result will be skewed towards low cohesion. Such inclusion is not a good idea since, by definition, getters and setters only access one attribute and thus will produce an LCOM value showing lower cohesion.
Hierarchy: Yet another challenge in LCOM computation is concerning to attributes that are present in the base class but only accessed by its derived classes. For methods in the derived classes, the common access to such an attribute is not considered by most of the present methods. Although the issue has been discussed in a few research papers [6], the present set of tools has not adopted it widely.

References

Chidamber, S. R., & Kemerer, C. F. (1991). Towards a metrics suite for object oriented design (Vol. 26, pp. 197–211). Presented at the OOPSLA '91: Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications, New York, New York, USA: ACM. http://doi.org/10.1145/117954.117970
Chidamber, S. R., & Kemerer, C. F. (1994). A metrics suite for object oriented design. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 20(6), 476–493. http://doi.org/10.1109/32.295895
Henderson-Sellers, Brian, Larry L. Constantine and Ian M. Graham. “Coupling and cohesion (towards a valid metrics suite for object-oriented analysis and design).” Object Oriented Systems 3 (1996): 143-158.
Hitz, Martin and Montazeri, Behzad. “Measuring coupling and cohesion in object-oriented systems”. Proceedings of International Symposium on Applied Corporate Computing (1995): 25-27.
W. Li, S. Henry. “Maintenance Metrics for the Object Oriented Paradigm”. In Proc. 1st Int. Software Metrics Symp., Los Alamitos, CA, May 21-22 1993, IEEE Comp. Soc. Press, 1993, 52-60.
Etzkorn, Letha and Davis, Carl and Li, Wei. “A Practical Look at the Lack of Cohesion in Methods Metric”. Journal of Object-oriented programming, 1998, vol. 11, no 5, 27-34.

How to Get a Resident Permit in Greece

2016-10-20T18:13:00-04:00

This is going to be a long post; so hold on. My goal to write this article is not only sharing the process of acquiring a resident permit in Greece but also to share my experiences (read frustration) during this process.

It must be easy to follow rules and difficult to bypass them. If it is other way round, the system breeds defaulters. Well... I am not sure whether it is the case here in Greece; however, it is indeed difficult, effort intensive, and time consuming to follow rules here. I am saying this based on what I experienced in almost in a year to acquire the resident permit in Greece for me and my family.

Let me elaborate.

The first contact

It started in January first week when I approached Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reconstruction office in Athens. The website of ministry is in English also but it is a mystery - I am not sure how to dig information for making an application for a permit on this site. Thankfully, one greek friend helped me to figure out the required documents to apply for a resident permit. He was generous - he accompanied me to go the ministry's office too.

When we reached there we were asked about the appointment. Yes, an appointment!! We didn't know that an appointment is required to make the application (the web-site doesn't mention this). So, we were treated like unwanted, uninvited guests; we were made to wait outside of the office for a couple of hours. After that, the guard, who is allowing people like us to go in one by one, called us and I was able to apply for the permit and submitted the required documents.

Inside view of the ministry's office

The ministry's office deals with non-greeks but almost all the sign boards are in Greek!! Even more, many employees cannot talk any language other than greek!! Welcome in Greece. :)

After this incident, we don't want to go there without an appointment. We need to call one of the three phone numbers to make an appointment. The stone-age mechanism to book an appointment is inefficient and arduous. If you call ten times and somebody picks the phone, that is your lucky day. Whenever you want to book an appointment, try all three numbers. If you are not that lucky, you need to try multiple times at the different times of the day.

Contact numbers to book an appointment

I don't know why there is no online system to reserve an appointment. The test of luckiness doesn't end with a successful call, you need to ask the person who is picking your call "do you speak English?" Yes, many times, after trying hard to reach an officer on phone, (s)he says (s)he doesn't speak English and put down the phone. Pheww!! If you are extremely lucky to get an officer who speaks English, he will ask a few details and book an appointment for you. Mostly, you will get a date after a month.

You might be wondering why I needed an appointment when I already made the application. Well... it is not easy to fulfill the requirements of a resident permit. In fact, one needs registration to an insurance company to get resident permit and resident permit to apply for an insurance. And I thought, cyclic dependencies only occur in software systems.

To break the cycle, the office has introduced an intermediatory step. We need to apply for the permit with all but the insurance papers. The required document are:

Copy of passport
Original passport
Copy of visa
Copy of the employment contract
Original Employment contract
Photos (2)
Fee payment receipt (Fee is 150 Euro per year; can be paid by e-banking)

Once the request is made successfully, I got a certificate (officially known as "ΒΕΒΑΙΩΣΗΣ ΚΑΤΑΘΕΣΗΣ ΓΙΑ ΕΚΔΟΣΗ ΑΔΕΙΑΣ ΔΙΑΜΟΝΗΣ") which is a proof that I have made an application for my resident permit. This certificate (sample shown below) could be used to apply for insurance. Please note that it is not an interim resident permit.

Certificate of submitting initial set of documents

Fulfilling the requirements

To enroll in an insurance company, I required to be registered as a freelancer (it's like resolving dependencies while installing a software). I did the initial research and my greek friends also helped me in the process. I realized that the long list of steps for freelancer registration is not what I can do without knowing greek. So, we hired an accountant to help me set up my books, register me as a freelancer, and insure me with an insurance company. After providing some documents as well as many authorization letters, I got insured via OAEE (an insurance company).

With a letter from OAEE, I fulfilled all the requirements to get a resident permit. I arranged an appointment again with the help of my greek friends and submitted the document. After some ten days or so, I saw that the status of my application is "approved". Hurrayyy :)

Yes, one can track the resident permit application status online (http://pf.emigrants.ypes.gr/pf) but only after all the documents are submitted.

In the excitement, I reached the ministry's office next day. By the way, the office was quite far from my home; it takes more than 1 hour for me to reach there using public transport. I reached the office and told the security guard that I just need to collect the permit. He said - "Do you have an appointment?" I said, "no; but, I just need to collect the approved permit". He did not allow me to go inside and I have to come back with frustration.

Starting the process for the family

By that time, my family also arrived in Greece and I have to apply resident permits for them too. I had an appointment for both of them. The following documents are required to apply resident permit for spouse and kid:

Copy of passport
Original passport (just for verification; they will give it back)
Copy of valid visa
Receipt of fee (there is no fee for kids)
Proof of marriage (for spouse)
Birth certificate (for kid)

We went to the office and made the applications. One of the required documents for my wife was "marriage certificate" to prove the relationship with me. Similarly, my name was required on the birth certificate of my kid. That's fine. I had both the certificates with apostle from the Indian government. So, I was pretty sure there cannot be any issue. I was surprised when the officer asked me to produce greek translation of both the documents!! I argued that both the documents are in English (and not in any local Indian language) but they want Greek translation. Not really pleasant.

Well... one good thing that happened on that day is that I got my resident permit. At least some reason to cheer. A sample of a resident permit is shown below which is a sticker that is pasted on one of the empty pages of the applicant's passport.

Sample of a resident permit

Greek translation

Getting a greek translation is fairly simple (if you know where to go). At first, I tried to contact some lawyers for the translation. The lawyers were asking too much money (100 Euro per page) for translation and certification (verification). I was hesitant to go to the office of Internal Affairs Ministry that provides translation services. However, I gathered my courage and went there with my documents. This is fascinating (again); this office mainly serves non-greeks but all the sign boards are in greek and the officers barely express themselves in English. However, it was a pleasant surprise that they accepted the documents and charged only 11 Euros for one page. I got the translation after a week. Nice.

I arranged another appointment and submitted the translated documents. Now, they wanted me to add both of them in my insurance as the last step of this pursuit.

Fulfilling the last requirement

I approached my accountant for helping me in this matter. She was on vacation (yeah, it was summer vacation time in Athens). Then, I went to the insurance company office alone. I couldn't do much since I don't speak greek and they don't speak English. I requested one of my greek friends to help me out. He came to my rescue. There, we came to know that we need AMKA (kind of a social security number) for both wife and kid.

I asked in one of the KEPs (public service offices) and they said that I need to bring my wife and kid there with passport and AFM (tax number; only for my wife). Next day, all of us went to the tax office near my university from where I got my AFM. After standing in a queue for more than 1:30 hours, we came to know that we need to go to another tax office near our residence. We didn't know that there are many tax offices and we have to go to a specific tax office based on our home address!!

Then, next day we went to another tax office. It was quick. Within 15 minutes, we got AFM for my wife. Then, we went to nearest KEP (which was quite far from the tax office). We got AMKA within 10 minutes. Interestingly, the officer in the KEP didn't ask for the AFM. So, the rules differ from KEP to KEP (and your luck).

I again requested one of my greek friends to help me with the insurance company. We spent more than two hours there to fill many forms, go to KEP (public service office) to get verified declarations and go to xerox shop to get photocopies of various documents. Finally, I got a "Biblio" (insurance book) containing details of all three of us.

Then, I called a couple of times to the ministry's office to get an appointment to submit the proof that my wife and kid are now covered by my insurance. They took the details and said we will inform you when it is ready. Okay, I waited a few days.

One day, I got a call from the ministry's office that I need to get a certificate from the insurance company stating that my wife and kid are covered by my insurance. I was happy that the application is progressing. During the call, I asked the officer to provide me an appointment since by this time I understood the importance of an appointment. The officer said, "it's not required; you just need to hand over this document to one of the officers with your passport copy." Fair enough.

Touching new levels of frustration

Next day, I went to the insurance company with my greek friend and got the required certificate. That was relatively easy. However, when I went to the ministry's office to submit the document, the security guard denied the admission without an appointment. I was explaining that one of your officers told me that it is not required but he didn't listen to me. I thought, anyway I have come here so spend some more time and wait here. So, I waited there. As explained earlier, if you don't have an appointment, you have to wait for your turn based on first come first serve basis. The security guard takes care of the scheduling. Now, I waited there more than 3 hours in the hope that the guard will call me. I was checking with him periodically and he was saying me to wait. At 1 PM, the officers stopped processing requests and at 1:30 PM the guard called the last person whose request will be processed and asked me to leave. Interestingly, his name was written after my name in the list the guard was processing FCFS! I felt very frustrated after wasting 3 valuable hours.

It's an irony that I started writing this article when I was waiting in the ministry's office that day.

A long wait

I arranged another appointment with the help of one of my greek friends. The appointment that I got was one and half months away! So, we just need to wait. An important aspect that I realize is that visa of my wife and kid was going to expire in next one and half months. If they don't get resident permit by that time, they have to go back to India and apply for a visa to come back!! Scary thought.

The last leg

Before going there, we thought that this is probably the second last time we are visiting the ministry's office (this visit to submit the pending documents and one final visit to collect the permits). We went there and submitted the required documents. The officer accepted our documents and said: "Congratulations, you are done". We were happy and we started moving from there after saying a warm thank you. Suddenly, she said - "Wait" and immediately a scary thought came to me - "Is she going to ask for another document?". But, no; she said that we can wait here for half an hour and then we can collect our permits. Wow!! It was a pleasant surprise. Indeed, after half an hour we got the permits. What a relief.

Finally, after struggling for months I managed to get the resident permit for myself and my family. It took more than 6 months for me and more than 7 months for my family to get resident permits. The amount of time and effort required for an individual to comply with the law is significantly high. I am aware that it is a matter of 1-2 weeks in some other (a few selected) countries especially for highly skilled/educated migrants. The effect of such an arduous process could be huge. For instance, such a process could deter such migrants to consider Greece for an even short-term stay.

The process would have been even difficult for me if my greek friends would not have helped me in this process. Thanks buddies :) Also, it is interesting that although the process was painful, in general, individuals were helpful. I can recollect many faces who helped me in one or another way in this pursuit.

I sincerely hope to read a better experience next time somebody writes his/her story about resident permit in Greece.

How to Carry Out a Quick Design Assessment - An Example

2016-08-14T19:21:00-04:00

Poor design quality and huge technical debt are common issues perceived in real-life software projects. Carrying out a software design quality assessment effectively and adopting the recommendations from it could improve the design quality. A comprehensive design assessment requires us to know the requirements in detail and weight different design aspects in accordance with the requirements. The amount of effort and time required to carry out a comprehensive design assessment could be quite high. However, a quick and effective design assessment can be carried out by measuring standard code quality metrics and by identifying design and implementation smells.

Let us take NRefactory as an example and perform a software design quality assessment. NRefactory is an open-source library that parses C# code, provides Abstract Syntax Tree (AST), and offers many features relevant for static code analysis.

A software design assessment must reveal the following:

Total number of design smells and design smell density
Total number of implementation smells and corresponding smell density
A holistic picture of code quality metrics violations, and
Code duplication

There are a few tools to measure various metrics for C# code such as Source Monitor (Free), Gendarme (Free), NDepend (Commercial; free trial for 14 days), and Designite (Commercial; trial version free forever). For implementation and design smells detection, NDepend provides CQLinq to create rules to detect some of the smells; however, Designite supports detection of a wide variety of implementation and design smells explicitly. Therefore, I am going to use Designite to analyze the project under analysis in this article.

To start the analysis, I selected NRefactory.sln in Designite (menu “Analysis” -> “Analyze a solution”). Designite analyzed all the projects in the solution and provided a summary. The total LOC (Lines of Code) in all the projects is approximately 395 thousand with more than 2100 classes and 15 thousand methods. It also revealed that the total design smell density for all the analyzed projects is 11.07. Smell density shows how many design smells were found per thousand lines of code on an average. Further, the total code duplication is 9.63 % which is on the higher side (although there is no one globally accepted number for code duplication, anything above 3% could be considered high).

Summary of the analysis produced by Designite

There are 13 C# projects in the NRefactory solution. I am going to focus on one significant project “ICSharpCode.NRefactory” in this article. Design smell density for this project is 7 and code duplication is 14.62% (very high!).

Design smells

The tool detected 230 design smells in this project. Let us take a closer look at them. Abstraction smells are more than 50% of total detected design smells. Two dominant number of smells in this category are Duplicate Abstraction and Unutilized Abstraction.

Detected design smells shown in a sunburst diagram

Given the high percentage of code duplication, it is obvious to see a high number of Duplicate Abstraction. The code clone revealed in one of the reported Duplicate Abstraction instances is TypeGraph[lines 1-24] and TypeGraphNode [1-24]. However, if we open the files in which this clone has been detected, we can observe that it is due to the file header text (including copyright text). We can safely ignore such smells. However, another reported instance of Duplicate Abstraction is a genuine code duplication where the file containing UnicodeNewline has a clone [165-206, 218-259].

We can use sunburst diagram to filter the detected smells at different granularity (Principle, Smell, Namespace, and Class). Let us take a look at another abstraction smell reported in high volume – Unutilized Abstraction. This smell occurs when an abstraction is not used across the solution. For instance, the class AbiComparer has not been used anywhere in the analyzed source code.

The tool detected 39 Cyclically-dependent Modularization smells also. One of the examples of such a cycle is IUnresolvedEvent, IType, TypeParameterSubstitution, IMember, and ITypeResolveContext.

There are 230 design smells detected in the project. Now, how can we choose a subset of classes that requires the refactoring first? The hotspots analysis of the tool revealed 9 classes as hotspots that we may choose to refactor first.

Hotspot analysis

Implementation smells

Smells could arise at various granularities (implementation, design, and architecture); categorization of smells depends on the factors such as scope and their impact on the rest of the system. Implementation smells concern mainly with the implementation specific quality issues. Let us see how the software under analysis fairs with implementation smells.

Detected implementation smells shown in a sunburst diagram

The tool has detected 400 implementation smells belonging to 8 types of implementation smells with implementation smell density 12.7 (the project has 31286 LOC). What do you think about the smell density? Is it high or low? Well, it is better to compare smell density associated with two (or more) versions of a software rather than drawing a conclusion based on a smell density threshold.

Magic Number (187 instances) and Long Statement (101 instances) are most frequently implementation smells in the project. One example of detected Magic Number smell is given below:

foreach (char c in key) { h = (h << 5) - h + c;}

Just looking at the snippet, it is not clear why the literal '5' has been chosen as a shift offset; that’s why it’s a magic number.

Metrics

Let us explore a few code quality metrics and observe how the project fairs with them. It’s important to observe a holistic view of the project with respect to a metric since it provides a complete picture of code quality of the project. The tool provides a pie-chart with respect to each metric.

The first metric is WMC (Weighted Methods per Class) which is the sum of cyclomatic complexities of all the methods in the class.

Pie chart showing health of the project from a metric perspective

We can observe that most of the classes are in the green zone (which is great). Only 1 class is in the yellow zone (metric value slightly above the threshold), 3 classes are in the orange zone (metric value quite above the threshold), and only 1 class is in the red zone (metric value dangerously above the threshold).

Let us view the project status with respect to class LOC. There are only 4 and 1 classes in the yellow and orange zone respectively. Based on this information, the project is maintained well at least from the code quality metrics that we have considered.

Trend Analysis

It is relevant to observe how the project evolved from code quality perspective. One way to carry out trend analysis is to generate code quality information (smells and metrics) and then compare manually. Thankfully, we don’t have to do this. Designite allows us to carry out trend analysis and presents the smells trend in a visually pleasing manner.

I have chosen 9 different versions of the project; details of the chosen versions are given in the following table:

Versions analyzed

Designite produced the following trend analysis graph for the above versions.

Trend analysis showing evolution of the project from smells perspective

It is interesting to observe that as the project size increased from 191 KLOC to 395 KLOC, smell density has constantly decreased from 76.56 to 43.67. It’s a great sign of improvement. However, the above results are for the whole solution. If we want to see trend analysis information specific to the project that I have chosen in this article, we can use the console application of Designite for the customized analysis. The following table, which is generated by the Designite console application, shows trend information specific to the project under analysis.

Summary of the trend analysis produced by Designite

The table shows interesting information. In the version 051e5, smell density was very high (81.8). Later, it looks like that the project was broken into other projects and considerable refactoring had been performed. It is very obvious from the transition from version 051e5 to version 98bc8 where smell density reduced drastically from 81.8 to 28.02. For rest but the last of the analyzed versions, the smell density remains almost stable. In the latest version of the project, the code quality improved even further as shown by the smell density (20.78).

To summarize, we observed the following during the above assessment:

Code duplication is quite high; however, a majority of clone instances are coming from file headers and copyright declarations.
There are many Unutilized Abstraction and Cyclically-dependent Modularization smell instances which need be refactored.
Long Statement and Magic Number are the two most frequently occurring implementation smells in the project.
The project does very well from well-known code quality metrics perspective.
The trend analysis shows that the code quality of the project is constantly improving.

Visit Designite's website to know more about the tool.

A Memorable Trip to Santorini

2016-07-05T21:08:00-04:00

In April, my family shifted with me in Athens from Bangalore. Shifting from home country to another country is not easy and in pursuit to convince them I used "tourism" as an effective weapon. Now, after the initial settling down period, it's time for me to plan a trip for my family.

I heard enough about the beauty of Greek islands and being in Greece, it was obvious for us to plan for one of the Greek islands. However, it was not an easy decision to choose one of the islands for the trip. There are a few thousand islands in Greece (the exact number depends on the minimum size threshold) grouped into named clusters (such as Cyclades, Ionian, and North Aegean). Based on the popularity and the opinion of friends, we finally decided to visit Santorini this summer.

Logistics

For our 3 days stay, we explored a few options and booked Earino suits and villas in Akrotiri (one of the villages on the island).

There are two options to reach Santorini from Athens - by plane and by ferry. Obviously, planes are faster; ferries are slower but are more scenic. We chose ferry over the plane. Now, there are mainly two types of ferries - open deck ferries and highspeed ferries. Blue star ferries operate open deck ferries which are large ships having the capacity to carry more than 2000 people and 400 vehicles. These ferries take approximately 8 hours to reach to Santorini from Athens. On the other hand, highspeed ferries (by Hellenic Seaways) can carry more than 950 people and approximately 250 vehicles. The highspeeds reach to Athens from Santorini in approximately 5 hours. We wanted to experience both the ferries so we booked the onward journey in an open deck ferry and return journey in a highspeed ferry.

One important thing to note: it is necessary to have tickets before the journey; the online booking confirmation is not enough. We collected our tickets from a Viva outlet in The Athens Mall (Neratziotissa).

Onward journey

Well... we were really excited; after all, this was our first journey in a large ship. We woke up very early (something like 5 AM) and left our home around 5:30 AM. We used public transport and reached at Piraeus around 6:30 AM to catch our 7:30 AM ferry.

Entrance of the blue star ferry

The ship was really big (the biggest I have seen so far). When we reached gate E7 of the port, the entrance of the ship was open and people were queued to get in. We followed the queue and in a few minutes, we were inside the ferry.

The ferry offers different types of seating - economy (unreserved), reserved (airplane-like seats), cabin, and business class. I would recommend reserved seats unless you are planning to be always on the deck and ready to stand or even sit on the ground (it was really crowded till we reached Paros).

Restaurant in the ferry

We opted for reserved seats which were quite comfortable with large leg-room. We were lucky to get our seats near the glass window. Once the ferry started, I took a detailed round of the ferry. It has a few ATMs, restaurants on both the sides on each level, and a shop (if one is interested in travel accessories, toys, books, or jewelry). One may go out on deck at level 7 and 8 to witness the spectacular deep blue sea, click photographs, relax (if lucky enough to find a chair) and enjoy his favorite drink.

Our ferry had two stops before reaching to Thira (or Santorini) - Paros and Naxos. Almost half of the people got down at these islands. This is probably the perfect time for anybody traveling to Santorini to go out on the deck if he/she couldn't find a place earlier.

A traveler might be carrying a bag that he/she don't want to leave behind when he/she goes out on the deck. Although, nothing will happen to the bag if one goes out for a few minutes and comes back; however, announcements such as "...don't leave your bag unattended due to security reasons..." may make the traveler uncomfortable. One solution to this problem is that the traveler may check-in his/her bag to the luggage room while entering in the ferry.

Well.. after more than seven and half hours journey, we reached Santorini (more formally called Fira or Thira). It's a rather small port just below a cliff. The weather was a bit hot (32 degrees celsius). We took our taxi which was waiting for us and headed to our hotel. We were amazed by the view offered en route.

Bedroom of our hotel room

We checked-in to our hotel, gathered some useful information, and relaxed a bit. The suites in this hotel are built in a traditional way where the top of a suite forms a semi-circle. The ground floor has a living room and kitchen and the first floor mainly has a bedroom. Nice :)

Awesome sunset

Sunset in Akrotiri

The awesome combination of the sea and the sun makes Santorini such an amazing place. Oia, a village on this island, is particularly famous for its sunset view. Another very nice location for sunsets is Akrotiri. We found an excellent sunset point near our hotel in Akrotiri and witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets of our lives.

We spent one evening in Oia - a beautiful but crowded place. The village has many small streets and it is worth to explore the streets randomly; it will keep your shutterbug-self busy. Many times, we just followed the crowd and we landed at really nice spots.

Sunset in Oia

To capture the famous sunset in Oia, we acquired a good spot on a very crowded sunset point (which is basically a staircase). There were many people waiting for the sunset like us. As the sun started to descent to the horizon, the sound of camera clicks became prominent. The colors of the evening were vibrant. It was really great to see the beautiful and scenic sunset.

Intra-city Transport

It is highly recommended to hire a car (or ATV(All Terrain Vehicle) - a quad-wheel bike, or scooter) to roam within the island. These options are easily available at a reasonable cost. Officially, the rental agencies require that the driver has a European or international driving license; however, for me, after a little while, they were ready to give a car based on my Indian driving license. I guess the person at the rental agency was desperate and ready to take some risk.

We did not opt for a car because I am used to left-hand drive and never driven in countries where the drive is right-handed. Also, an island implies small roads and very frequent hairpin bends. I was not comfortable driving a car in such a situation.

Fira bus stand

Here comes the public transport. The island has a public transport system; the system is analogous to the client-server architecture in computing systems. Fira is the central bus stand which serves to buses to the rest of the island. If one wish to visit Oia from Akrotiri, first he has to come to the bus stand of Fira and then change the bus from there to Oia. The buses have a timetable but we have not seen them following the schedule strictly. The buses are very well maintained and cost-effective. One way ticket costs 1.80 to 2.40 Euro depending on the destination. The traveler has to buy tickets on the bus itself.

Buses don't operate in the late hours (in some areas, the last bus is at 8 PM). So, if you are late to catch a bus or you prefer transport till the doorstep of your hotel, you may opt for a taxi. However, taxis are not easily available. You need to go to the taxi stand behind the Fira bus stand to get a taxi.

Beaches

Perissa beach

Santorini has a few good beaches such as Perissa, Perivolos, and Red beach. We visited Perissa beach and spent a few hours. Most of the beaches in Santorini are black beaches due to the volcano. Perissa was nice and clean but completely commercial.

Fira

White and blue homes

This small village is the center of the island. It can be described by just two colors - white and blue. It's a very beautiful combination where doors and windows are painted blue and rest of the house in white. Churches with blue domes are peculiar to Santorini; they are simply beautiful.

We explored the streets, mostly randomly. The small streets are packed with many small shops. The local shops sell souvenirs, local wines, and other local products such as olive paste and sun-dried cherry tomatoes. Although, the universal tourism rules (such as over-priced stuff) applies here also.

Food

The traditional greek food served by the restaurants in Santorini was great. We were happy that the restaurants serve a wide variety of vegetarian food.

Our hotel served nice breakfasts in our room. Freshly baked spinach pies were really nice.

The return journey

Okay, it's time to go back. The return tickets were booked in a highspeed ferry by Hellenic Seaways. The experience was quite different from the onward journey. On one hand this journey was shorter; but on the other hand, the ride was bumpy and unstable. After experiencing both the ferries, I would prefer to go in a slow and stable ferry to avoid sea-sickness.

We arrived at the Piraeus port in about five hours and by another hour, we were at our home.

In summary, it was a memorable trip. We enjoyed ourselves and spent quality family time together. If you like the sea and the sun and if the crowd doesn't bother you, it is the place to go.

Presentation smells: How not to prepare your conference presentation

2016-06-04T11:54:00-04:00

Recently, I was in Austin, Texas to attend ICSE (International Conference on Software Engineering) and MSR (Mining Software Repositories) conferences. The authors presented excellent papers on a variety of topics concerning software engineering. Despite their excellent technical content, I was discontented by the presentation skills exhibited by some of the authors. It's not only the students, but even some of the experienced researchers gave not so exciting presentations.

Preparing for an effective presentation and presenting it well on a large forum is a very important activity in the lifespan of a research idea. Therefore, every research student should learn how to create and present effective presentations.

So, how can we become effective presenters? Well... there are many useful resources available such as Slide:ology, Presentation Patterns, The Elements of Computing Style, and Presentation Zen on preparing good presentations and effectively delivering them. In addition, I have put together a set of presentation smells based on my understanding. Each presentation has two major aspects: slides and delivery. In the rest of the article, I describe presentation smells concerning the first part (slides) that every presenter should avoid.

1. Text hell

A presentation is not a document nor a teleprompter; hence, don't try to stuff all the information in words. If a slide contains a lot of text, your audience will try to read the text and will not bother what you are speaking. Slides are for defining the flow and providing visual information such as images and videos; thus, use it in the spirit and not otherwise.

2. Color-mania

Slide design is not a competition where slides with maximum colors used will win. A human mind takes some time to identify and process the colors; therefore, simplify your slides and avoid multi-color text so that the audience pay attention to content and not to the colors. Use preferably one (or maximum two) colors for the text in a slide and use them consistently throughout your presentation. Also, pay attention to the background color and contrast; avoid multicolor background and make sure that foreground color of your slides is contrasting with slide’s background color.

3. Brother of the bride

In many cultures, brother of the bride has many responsibilities at the time of his sister's marriage. Don't make your slides look like such a brother. In other words, follow single responsibility principle and put one concept, idea, or thought in a slide.

4. BYOB (Bring Your Own Binocular)

The text (or image) that you put on your slides must be readable from the back of the room where you are going to present. The audience does not carry binoculars; thus, you must not pretend the same.

5. HiPU (Highly Paid but Useless) headers

Headers get the highest attention because of their size. In many situations, slide headers are verbose and do not convey additional useful information. Avoid headers in such cases, or reduce their size.

6. Secretary of HiPU

A line under the slide headers is analogous to a secretary of HiPU. Do not underline the slide header. It populates the slide with unnecessary noise. In fact, underlines must be avoided not only in headers but also in the body text.

7. Do you know who I am

The title slide may contain affiliation about the contributors and presenter; however, repeating this information (in the form of university/company name or logo) at the bottom (or top) of every slide is unnecessary and annoying.

8. Bullet, [sub-]bullet, [sub-sub-]bullet

One level of bullets in a slide is preferred. Use the second level of bullets only when it is really necessary. Third-level bullets must be avoided.

9. It's Las Vegas

Animations must be used only where they make sense. Over usage of animations with a lot of moving objects distract the audience and thus, must be avoided.

10. Chaotic stylist

All the slides in a presentation must follow a single style consistently. The style includes text size and color for both body text and headers, color, width, and drawing pattern of shapes, and border style and shadow of image objects. Inconsistency shows recklessness of the presenter and thus, must be avoided.

11. Stung by spell-bee

Making a spelling mistake is analogous to committing a crime. Spell-checkers are available on each presentation preparing software, so there is no excuse for making spelling mistakes. Each presentation must go through a spell-checker to avoid unnecessary embarrassment.

12. The devil of details

Do not try to explain the nitty-gritty of your method or idea in a short presentation. Often, the short time is not enough to allow the presenter to go in the details. An attempt to quickly cover the details will result in the losing attention of the audience. Abstract the idea, simply complex figures, and use metaphors to communicate your ideas effectively.

If you are wondering what a great talk looks like (from both slides as well as delivery perspective), consider watching talks by Martin Fowler, Garr Reynolds, or David JP Phillips.

Please note that these are just guidelines to create better presentations. It's not necessarily a bad thing if you cannot follow any of the above guidelines especially when you have an appropriate rationale for not doing so.

I have developed a tool slideQto detect these presentation smells. It is open-source under a liberal license; feel free to clone, modify, and use. :)

[Originally posted on XRDS]

Enjoying Life in Athens: A Survival Guide from an Indian Perspective

2016-05-01T14:10:00-04:00

When I decided to resign from Siemens Research (Bangalore) after working there for more than seven years and move to Athens (Greece) in the second half of 2015, many of my friends expressed surprise. They were wondering why I am leaving a well-settled career and moreover, why I am moving to Athens! Well.. after spending more than four months here (in Athens), I am really happy that I made that decision. :)

It is not easy for any individual to settle in a new country where culture, food, and language differ significantly. In this post, I am going to share my experience on how one can survive and moreover, enjoy life in Athens.

The city of Athens

Let me start with the city - Athens. I like the city very much. The city center of Athens is vibrant, alive, and full of enthusiasm. You go to popular squares such as Syntagma or Monastiraki and you will find lots of people hanging around, sunbathing, or simply chatting within their groups. The suburbs are much calmer, greener, and elite.

Syntagma Square during Christmas

Athens is a green city with a lot of plants in each street of the city. In fact, initially, I was surprized to see trees full of oranges in each part of the city. These oranges are bitter and hence known as "bitter oranges" and mostly for decoration and not for human consumption (apart from a sweet prepared from them).

Street full of bitter oranges

In general, the greeks are really helpful people. People who I knew, helped me much more than I expected; moreover, I received help on multiple occasions from many other greeks who I barely know.

Everyone speaks Greek here; however, many people know English as well. In general, I found young greeks have higher exposure and knowledge of English than the relatively older ones. Although it is possible to survive without knowing Greek here, it is recommended to know Greek for a smoother living experience.

Natural beauty and cultural richness

Greece is a heaven when we consider cultural richness and natural beauty. It requires a separate post to justify the topic. Therefore, I am skipping the topic in this post.

Finding a house

Finding a house for rent in Athens is not difficult especially when you are willing to engage property agents. I found my apartment using a website. There are many properties listed; you can search the desired house based on your requirements and budget. Once you shortlist a couple of houses, you contact the corresponding agencies expressing your interest in the property(ies). Many of the agents speak English. They arrange a visit to the house(s) and if you like the house, the deal is done. You need to pay a month's rent to these agencies (yeah, I know; it's too much).

Food

Food is the most important aspect in a foreign country especially when you are a vegetarian. I am a vegetarian and have invested a fair amount of energy to find suitable and known (Indian) ingredients.

Find a local grocery store near your place. The popular chains are AB Vassilopoulos and Carrefour. You will find a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, spices, rice, pulses, and other essentials in these stores. Product information is written mainly in Greek and thus, you need to learn the basic Greek to read about the products.

Pro tip: There are local weekly markets in many areas. Vegetables and fruits are not only fresh and very good quality but also very cheap. Also, in this way you can support the local suppliers. So, find such a local market near you and figure out the day of the week when it takes place.

Spices are an integral part of Indian food and therefore it is very important to find all different types of spices. As I mentioned, you can find most of the spices in grocery stores. For a wider variety, locate an Asian store (such as East Asian store). Shops in Evripidou Street (Athens city center) offer a large collection of spices. You may also find a good quality Basmati rice in above mentioned places.

Finding an appropriate rice is relatively easy, finding the desired wheat flour is not. In grocery stores, you will find different types of wheat flour varying in composition and granularity. We tried 6 types of wheat flour before we found what we were looking for. Currently, we use the whole wheat flour as shown in the figure. This flour is very rough and has yellow/off-white color; it is probably ok to mix it with other more finely grained wheat flour to gain better results.

Indian restaurants

Athens has many Indian restaurants. Refer TripAdviser's page on "Indian restaurants in Athens" for the list of popular Indian restaurants. I have visited Indian Masala, Pink Elephant, Indian Chef, and Mirch. I personally like Indian Masala which is near Thessio metro station.

Online food ordering

You can avail the services of e-food.gr or Dominos among many others when you don't want to enter in your kitchen.

Nightlife

Athens is popular for its nightlife. Athens is alive and vibrant after dark, especially in the city center. Athens's city center hosts many small and large bars, discs, and open air restaurants. The city is extremely safe even at night; although, people suggest to avoid areas like Omonia and Victoria in dark hours.

Syntagma Square

Cafes and bars

Greeks love coffee. Capachinno and Latte are common drinks during winter. In summer, people prefer to sip "Frappe" (cold coffee).

In Athens, cafes and bars are probably the most frequently occurring shops. Greeks like to spend time in cafes and bars with their friends and family while sipping their drink. This is one of the many qualities we (Indians, especially urban Indians) must learn from the Greeks.

Shopping

Well..time for making your pockets lighter. You may hit downtown Athens for shopping; the lane in front of Syntagma square has many showrooms of known global brands as well as local stores offering wide choices. Shopping area in Kifisia provides an elite experience. Likewise, Golden Hall and Attica are good choices for premium stuff. Another area worth mentioning for shopping is "The village" (McArthur Glen) - an open air mall situated in Spata.

Travel

Athens has a decent public transport that makes it very easy to commute within Athens. The city has 4 metro lines covering the city, a wide network of buses, and tram. You need to buy a 1.40 Euro ticket to ride on any of these mediums. These tickets can be purchased from metro stations and small kiosks in some bus stops. You can also buy tickets from executive kiosks (small shops frequently seen near main roads). Before starting a trip, you need to validate the ticket using validation machines. Each ticket is valid in all forms of public transport for the 70 minutes window.

If you are living in Athens for a longer period, a weekly or monthly pass could be more convenient and cost effective.

Banks and public offices

Sadly, this is not an exciting part. Many banks do not allow you (even now) to open a new bank account due to ongoing capital control. You cannot withdraw money more than 420 Euro in a week (so spend wisely and keep some buffer). It is difficult (if not impossible) to get a credit card here since the bank requires income tax returns from last two years and it is impossible for anyone to provide the same if he/she arrived in Athens a few months ago.

In general, dealing with public offices in Athens could be a sour experience. These offices take time and require you to come again and again every time due to some or other reason (does this remind you India :)). They normally don't speak in English which adds the pain.

Strikes

Strikes are quite common in Greece (at least, based on what I have seen so far). In fact, there is a website to keep track of upcoming strikes :)

Automating Email Reporting

2016-04-28T21:07:00-04:00

You may have to report your daily (or weekly, monthly) progress to your supervisor. It is a good practice in multiple ways: you know what you did in a day and thus, keep track of your progress related to your work, you create a task completion history which you can go back and check anytime, and it keeps you motivated since your supervisor is looking at your progress. :)

However, everyday you need to send an email in a certain way (for example, email subject in a specific format). Many times, even though you have worked during the day, you couldn't send the email in the evening due to various reasons (for instance, you are tired, attending a party, or attending an evening technical event (meetup)).

We can simplify and separate the task in two sub-tasks

Writing text describing the progress
Sending the email

Whenever you complete a task, you make an entry in a text file and the rest can be automated to make our lives easier. In this post, I am describing steps to automate the process of sending such periodic emails. I executed these steps on my Macbook Pro running OS X 10.11.4.

Configure Postfix

Open terminal and edit configuration file of postfix.

sudo vi /etc/postfix/main.cf

Go to the end of the file, and add the following lines:

# Gmail SMTP 
relayhost=smtp.gmail.com:587 
# SASL authentication in the Postfix SMTP client. 
smtp_sasl_auth_enable=yes 
smtp_sasl_password_maps=hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd 
smtp_sasl_security_options=noanonymous 
smtp_sasl_mechanism_filter=plain 
# Enable Transport Layer Security (TLS) 
smtp_use_tls=yes 
smtp_tls_security_level=encrypt 
tls_random_source=dev:/dev/urandom

Create the sasl_passwd file

Create the sasl_passwd file with the SMTP credentials

sudo vi /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

Write the following line in the file:

smtp.gmail.com:587 your_email@gmail.com:your_password

We also need to create the Postfix lookup table (sasl_passwd.db) from the sasl_passwd file.

sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

Restart Postfix

sudo postfix reload

Check hostname

Check whether your hostname has been set properly to avoid the error "fatal: unable to use my own hostname". Type the command "hostname" and see whether you see an IP address or a non-numeric human readable name. If you see an IP address in the response to the "hostname" command, you may change the hostname by the following command:

sudo scutil --set HostName newName

For Gmail, turn on less secure apps

If you are using Gmail, you need to allow less secure apps to access Gmail to avoid authentication failures. You may change the settings here to allow less secure apps.

Test the mail

If everything has been properly configured, the following command should send an email to your desired account.

date | mail -s testing your_email@gmail.com

Setup a Git repo

After setting up the email mechanism, you may opt to setup a git repo to commit everyday's progress.

mkdir progress 
cd progress 
git init

Write a script to customize the email

Sometimes, you may not have anything to report. In those days, your system should not send an email. This can be achieved by writing the progress everyday in a pre-defined text file. You write a script to commit the changes in the file to the git repo, send the contents of the file as the email body only if you have something written in it, send the email, and finally clear the contents of the file.

I wrote the following script to achieve the above mentioned tasks.

#!/bin/sh 
cd /Path/to/progress 
git commit -m "new progress report" -a 
if [ -s progress.txt ] then   
mail -s "[Progress report Tushar] $(date +%F)" supervisorEmail <progress.txt 
fi 
# Clear the file, since we have sent it already and commited it in the repo 
> progress.txt

You may need to customize the subject based on your requirements and obviously replace the "supervisorEmail" with an appropriate email (to whom you wish to send the email).

You also need to add the script and the progress.txt to the git repo.

git add *

Schedule emails using Cron

Now, the last part of the puzzle is to write a cronjob that will execute the above script periodically. You can add/edit your cronjobs by the following command:

crontab -e

You specify the cronjob based on your requirements. The following job runs 11 PM everyday.

0 23 * * * /path/to/progress.sh

That's it. Everyday, whatever you write in progress.txt will be sent to your supervisor (if it is not empty). After sending the email, the scripts clears the contents of the file so that next day you start fresh.

[Thanks to Prof. Spinellis for optimizing the scrip]

Five Must-Read Books to Write Maintainable Code

2016-03-19T22:49:00-04:00

Writing high-quality code is not at all trivial and there is no shortcut to “add” quality in source-code. Quality is like spices in food; you need to add them at the right moment. You can’t just throw the spices in the vessel once the food is (almost) cooked and expect the great results.

Okay, if there is no shortcut to quality what is the detour to quality? Well.. in one word — “Learning” is the answer (no surprise, right?).

We learn from ourselves (by making mistakes and gaining experience) and from others (by reading about or listening to others’ experiences and knowledge). However, when it comes to reading books, there are many books on this topic!

In this post, I am presenting a set of books on code-quality that I consider every developer must read and follow. I refer to these books the “gold-set of books on code quality”. Obviously, there are many other good books; this is only a gold-set based on my limited experience.

Next, I briefly describe each book in the set ordered by their publishing year.

1. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

by Martin Fowler

This book is a classic. It made refactoring the mainstream concept in software development. The “smell” metaphor was first introduced in this book by Mr. Beck and Mr. Fowler. Various refactoring techniques were introduced which are actively used today by developers worldwide.

2. Code Complete 2

by Steve McConnell

This book is known for its encyclopedic coverage of almost all aspects of programming from data and control structures, class design, defensive programming, managing conditionals, testing, debugging, and refactoring. It was one of the first books (if not the first) to talk about self-documenting code and craftsmanship.

3. Code Quality: The Open Source Perspective

by Diomidis Spinellis

This book is on the list because it exposes a reader to different facets of code quality including portability, reliability, and maintainability. The book does a good job in not only explaining the potential issues and common mistakes associated with various quality attributes but also provides enough details to make a reader understand the underlying concept completely.

4. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

by Robert C. Martin

This is another landmark book in this domain. It introduced the famous boy scout rule which is considered as an effective guideline to maintain high code quality for evolving software systems. Additionally, the book provides a comprehensive list of best practices to write highly maintainable code.

5. Refactoring for Software Design Smells: Managing Technical Debt

by Girish Suryanarayana, Ganesh Samarthyam, Tushar Sharma

This book is not in the gold-set because I co-authored it (well ... may be) instead because it is the most comprehensive catalog and reference for design smells. The book follows a template to describe each smell. The template includes definition, rational, and aliases of a design smell, examples and corresponding refactoring suggestions, and quality attributes potentially impacted by the smell. War stories introduced while describing almost all smells make the book interesting and closer to the reality.

A Catalog of Configuration Smells

2016-03-16T08:34:00-04:00

If code-quality is one of your concerns, you must be aware of code smells and design smells. Similarly, code written in configuration management systems such as Puppet and Chef is also prone to such maintainability smells.

Recently, we (myself, Prof. Diomidis Spinellis, and Marios Fragkoulis) have worked on configuration smells and a paper summarizing the research has been accepted in the Mining Software Repositories conference (2016). The paper defines configuration smells and introduces a catalog of configuration smells that I am presenting below. Interested readers may take a look at the preprint of the paper.

We define configuration smells as follows:

Configuration smells are the characteristics of a configuration program or script that violate the recommended best practices and potentially affect the program's quality in a negative way.

Implementation Configuration Smells

Implementation configuration smells are quality issues such as naming convention, style, formatting, and indentation in configuration code.

1. Missing Default Case (IMD)

A default case is missing in a case or selector statement.

2. Inconsistent Naming Convention (INC)

The used naming convention deviates from the recommended naming convention.

3. Complex Expression (ICE)

A program contains a difficult to understand complex expression.

4. Duplicate Entity (IDE)

Duplicate hash keys or duplicate parameters present in the configuration code.

5. Misplaced Attribute (IMA)

Attribute placement within a resource or a class has not followed a recommended order (for example, mandatory attributes should be specified before the optional attributes).

6. Improper Alignment (IIA)

The code is not properly aligned (such as all the arrows in a resource declaration) or tabulation characters are used.

7. Invalid Property Value (IPV)

An invalid value of a property or attribute is used (such as a file mode specified using 3-digit octal value rather than 4-digit).

8. Incomplete Tasks (IIT)

The code has “FIXME” and “TODO” tags indicating incomplete tasks.

9. Deprecated Statement Usage (IDS)

The configuration code uses one of the deprecated statements (such as “import”).

10. Improper Quote Usage (IQU)

Single and double quotes are not used properly. For example, boolean values should not be quoted and variable names should not be used in single quoted strings.

11. Long Statement (ILS)

The code contains long statements (that typically do not fit in a screen).

12. Incomplete Conditional (IIC)

An “if..elsif” construct used without a terminating “else” clause.

13. Unguarded Variable (IUV)

A variable is not enclosed in braces when being interpolated in a string.

Design Configuration Smells

Design configuration smells reveal quality issues in the module design or structure of a configuration project.

1. Multifaceted Abstraction (DMF)

Each abstraction (e.g. a resource, class, ‘define’, or module) should be designed to specify the properties of a single piece of software. In other words, each abstraction should follow single responsibility principle. An abstraction suffers from multifaceted abstraction when the elements of the abstraction are not cohesive.
The smell may occur in the following two forms:

a resource (file, package, or service) declaration specifies attributes of more than one physical resources, or
all the language elements declared in a class, ‘define’, or a module are not cohesive.

2. Unnecessary Abstraction (DUA)

A class, ‘define’, or module must contain declarations or statements specifying the properties of a desired system. An empty class, ‘define’, or module shows the presence of unnecessary abstraction smell and thus must be removed.

3. Imperative Abstraction (DIA)

Puppet is declarative in nature. The presence of imperative statements (such as “exec”) defies the purpose of the language. An abstraction containing numerous imperative statements suffers from imperative abstraction smell.

4. Missing Abstraction (DMA)

Resource declarations and statements are easy to use and reuse when they are encapsulated in an abstraction such as a class or ‘define’. A module suffers from the missing abstraction smell when resources and language elements are declared and used without encapsulating them in an abstraction.

5. Insufficient Modularization (DIM)

An abstraction suffers from this smell when it is large or complex and thus can be modularized further. This smell arises in following forms:

if a file contains a declaration of more than one class or ‘define’, or
if the size of a class declaration is large crossing a certain threshold, or
the complexity of a class or ‘define’ is high.

6. Duplicate Block (DDB)

A duplicate block of statements more than a threshold indicates that probably a suitable abstraction definition is missing. Thus, a module containing such a duplicate block suffers from duplicate block smell.

7. Broken Hierarchy (DBH)

The use of inheritance must be limited to the same module. The smell occurs when the inheritance is used across namespaces (“is-a” relationship is not followed).

8. Unstructured Module (DUM)

Each module in a configuration repository must have a well-defined and consistent module structure. A recommended structure for a module is the following.

<Module name>
- manifests
- files
- templates
- lib
- facts.d
- examples
- spec

An ad-hoc structure of a repository suffers from unstructured module smell that impacts understandability and predictability of the repository.

9. Dense Structure (DDS)

This smell arises when a configuration code repository has excessive and dense dependencies without any particular structure.

10. Deficient Encapsulation (DDE)

This smell arises when a node definition or ENC (External Node Classifier) declares a set of global variables to be picked up by the included classes in the definition.

11. Weakened Modularity (DWM)

Each module must strive for high cohesion and low coupling. This smell arises when a module exhibits high coupling and low cohesion.

Tools to Detect Configuration Smells

To detect the above design configuration smells, we have developed Puppeteer which is an open-source tool written in Python. Puppet-Lint could be used to detect implementation configuration smells.

Refactor or Rewrite

2016-02-13T12:32:00-05:00

Conversations such as “Oh, this is such a cluttered design”, “This software has high technical debt”, and “What a complex code, uff” may lead to exchanges such as “Can’t we do something about this?”, “Why can’t we scrap this?”, and “Can refactoring make it better?” Essentially, the discussion boils down to the famous dilemma “Refactor or rewrite”. Let’s take a closer look at the dilemma and a few factors that impact the dilemma.

When it takes more time and effort than genuinely required to fix a bug or introduce a new feature in the software due to high technical debt (including high complexity, tightly coupled design, and so on), the software becomes difficult to maintain. In extreme conditions, making each change in the software becomes a painful nightmare. In such situations, the dilemma “refactor or rewrite” may capture the attention of project stakeholders.

History has taught us that “rewrite” from scratch could be strategically dangerous for the product and the company. Joel [1] has pointed out many such mistakes; some of them are:

Netscape released version 6 during the year 2000 after three years they released version 4 and yes, there were no version 5. Why? Because the company decided to develop the software from scratch! It took three years for them to do it by that time they lost the market.
Borland bought Arago to make dBase for Windows but started the development from the scratch; before they can make to the market, MS Access captured the market.

All of the above cases highlight strategic mistakes of these companies that wiped their market share. Thus the “Risk of losing the market” is indeed a significant factor to consider when the question (i.e. “Refactor or rewrite”) is posed. In this context, Refactoring could be favored since the product is always market-ready and refactoring can consistently improve the quality to sustain the product for a longer period.

If you think that the old software is a piece of crap that doesn’t deliver any value then think again. The old huge legacy software was maintained by your company for so long and in this duration, the project team has fixed numerous bugs aroused in different client conditions. In summary, the same piece of crap has accumulated huge knowledge and experience which is difficult (if not impossible) to introduce at once in a software developed from scratch. Again, from this dimension, Refactoring option is a fruitful alternative to retaining and exploiting the knowledge captured by the old software.

Does it mean we should always opt for refactoring over rewrite? Well..No. There is at least one case when it is desirable to go for a rewrite. When it becomes difficult to maintain old software technologically (difficult to get compatible hardware, software, or people who can run the show) since the used technology is obsolete while management of the product foresees a relatively long life for the product then rewrite could be an option. However, while opting rewrite, the risk associated with first two factors must be addressed; for instance, the management could decide to develop the new product from scratch with new technology without removing the old product from the market. Microsoft did the same once when they started developing Word from scratch under the project code name Pyramid. Although, the project Pyramid was a disaster but the parallel development saved Microsoft from losing the market.

[1]: Joel Spolsky, “Things you should never do, Part I"

Refactoring is the Yoga for Software

2016-02-13T12:11:00-05:00

Yoga is an ancient practice originated in India. It brings health and well-being to the human body.

We can metaphorically compare Yoga with Refactoring. Yoga is to body as Refactoring is to software. As Yoga brings health and well-being to human body, Refactoring improves the health of a software system by removing the “toxins” and “smells”.

Yoga offers various asanas (or postures, such as Padmasana and Vajrasana) where each asana flexes muscles belonging to a certain part of the body and bring benefits to the part of the body. Different postures not only aim different types of benefits to the different part of the body but also they work at different dimensions of human well-being (such as physical strength, flexibility, mental and spiritual piece). Similarly, refactoring techniques (such as extract method, rename, and extract class) can be compared with Yoga postures. As different Yoga postures bring benefits to different parts of the body, each refactoring technique targets the software at different abstraction levels and improves the quality of the software.

Motivation and dedication play an important role while performing Yoga as well as Refactoring. It is often difficult to engage individuals with the practice of Yoga/Refactoring especially when they have not really understood and realize the benefits. On the other hand, mere execution is not enough; half-hearted execution cannot bring the desired effects.

Both Yoga and Refactoring require training; it is mandatory to perform them accurately. Performing them in an incorrect way may bring harm (rather than any good) to the body and to the software.

Yoga leads to rising and expansion of spiritual consciousness.Similarly, Refactoring is an activity to increase the design and architecture consciousness (being aware of design and architectural challenges, constraints and proposing appropriate balancing solutions).

The effects of Yoga, as well as Refactoring, are not visible immediately. For the sustained benefits, it is required to practice Yoga (Refactoring) regularly.

Richard Hamming on "You and Your Research"

2016-02-13T10:48:00-05:00

This is an inspirational and thought-provoking lecture by Richard Hamming. I would strongly recommend it to anybody who is researching as a professional or as a student.

Some of the gems from the talk are as follows.

Once you become famous, it is easy to remain famous.
You have one life to live [..], and I suggest you to have a life of doing something significant.
The most important thing probably about great people is that they believe they can do great work. They have confident in themselves.
You must have to work on important problems.
Study your successes.
The one who works for the right problem at the right time in the right way counts nothing else.
Find a regular time to think - What are the important problems in your area?
Change doesn’t mean progress; but, progress requires change.
The unexamined life is not worth living (by Greek philosopher Socrates)
The style is everything.