Blekinge Institute of Technology
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Om kriget eller krisen kommer - hur ska jordbruksmarken användas då? : En studie av hur kommuner rationaliserar i jordbruksmarksfrågan i tider av ett förändrat omvärldsläge
No full text I en tid som präglas av geopolitisk instabilitet och klimatförändringar har jordbruksmarkens betydelse för en stärkt nationell beredskap kommit att aktualiserats och förutsättningarna för den kommunala strategiska planeringen förändrats. Mot bakgrund av det undersöker arbetet hur det förändrade omvärldsläget har påverkat hur kommuner rationaliserar i frågan om jordbruksmarkens användning och hur kommunerna förhåller sig till jordbruksmarken som ett nationellt intresse. Utifrån en kvalitativ flerfallsstudie, där empiri inhämtas genom intervjuer med kommunala planerare och analyserats genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys, undersöks vilka ställningstaganden som görs i jordbruksmarksfrågan och vilka omvärldsfaktorer som påverkar dessa. Analysen utgår från ett teoretiskt ramverk som bygger på att ställningstaganden kan kategoriseras utifrån ekonomisk, miljömässig, social och beredskapsmässig rationalitet. Därtill utgår det teoretiska ramverket från att ställningstaganden kan tolkas som strategiskt eller kommunikativt rationella. Med utgångspunkt i det har studien kunnat påvisa vilka skäl kommunerna har till sin planering, men också vilka skäl de ger till sin planering. Studien visar att kommuner rationaliserar sina beslut i jordbruksmarksfrågan genom att balansera olika rationella perspektiv. Jordbruksmarken hamnar återkommande i centrum av komplexa målkonflikter där ekonomiska och sociala intressen – såsom bostadsförsörjning och mål om lokal tillväxt, ställs mot miljömässiga och beredskapsmässiga intressen av att bevara marken. Som en följd av det förändrade omvärldsläget visar studien på att kommunernas strategiska val präglas av en medvetenhet om långsiktiga behov och risker, vilket i viss utsträckning lett till mer restriktiva ställningstaganden. Samtidigt visar studien att kommuner använder kommunikativt rationella argument, genom att motivera besluten utifrån väsentliga samhällsintressen och lokala behov, för att legitimera ianspråktagandet av jordbruksmarken. Det förändrade omvärldsläget har i första hand inte bara påverkat vilka värden som prioriteras, utan också hur dessa värden argumenteras och vägs mot varandra i den strategiska planeringen. Genom att synliggöra hur strategiska och kommunikativa rationaliteter samspelar i beslutsfattandet har studien bidragit med en förståelse för hur kommunerna navigerar mellan nationella intressen, lokala behov och globala utmaningar
Test-Driven Development : Exploring Prompt Engineering
No full textBackground: Test-Driven Development (TDD) offers theoretical benefits for software quality and design but faces significant adoption challenges due to its counter-intuitive approach and steep learning curve. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models, present opportunities to address these barriers by automating aspects of the TDD process. Objectives: This study aimed to (1) identify key benefits and challenges of AI-assisted TDD for novice developers through systematic literature review, (2) quantify how AI assistance affects efficiency, accuracy, and test coverage compared to manual TDD, and (3) determine whether AI can help minimize the skill gap between novice and experienced developers in TDD testing. Methods: Two methods were used to answer the questions, combining a literature review of six recent studies on AI-assisted TDD with an experimental study. The experiment involved 13 participants (8 novices, 5 experienced) who implemented a concert itinerary system using both manual and AI-assisted TDD. Performance was measured across three phases of TDD (red, green, refactoring) regarding time efficiency, test accuracy, and code coverage. Results: Literature analysis revealed three main benefits (automation, education, quality improvement) and three key challenges (learning difficulties, technical implementation, supervision requirements) of AI-assisted TDD. Experimental results showed that AI significantly improved test writing efficiency while maintaining comparable accuracy. Code coverage showed modest improvements with AI assistance , with experienced developers gaining greater benefits than novices. Despite efficiency gains, novices using AI required substantially more refactoring time than experienced, indicating persistent understanding gaps. Conclusions: AI assistance significantly reduces the time burden of TDD, addressing a key adoption barrier, while maintaining test quality and modestly improving coverage. However, AI creates a paradox: making TDD more accessible while potentially limiting deeper understanding development. The most effective approach integrates AI efficiency with human critical evaluation, where AI handles routine aspects while developers focus on the higher-order reasoning that makes TDD valuable. This integration represents a promising path toward wider TDD adoption in experienced software developmen
Web Performance Optimization and Its Impact on User Experience and Development Practices
No full textThe proliferation of dynamic and interactive web applications necessitates robust Web Performance Optimization (WPO) to meet user expectations for speed, responsiveness, and reliability. While numerous WPO techniques exist, understanding their practical impact on both objective metrics and perceived user experience (UX), alongside the challenges faced by developers in implementing them, remain crucial. This thesis investigates the effectiveness of various frontend WPO techniques, explores the hurdles encountered in development practice when implementing these client-side optimizations, and examines strategies for achieving sustainable optimization while maintaining accessibility and user satisfaction. Employing a mixed-methods approach, this study combines empirical testing using a controlled web application (comparing unoptimized, moderately optimized, and fully optimized versions) with qualitative user feedback and a survey targeting web developers. Key findings reveal that caching strategies, comprehensive image optimization, efficient asset loading techniques (including code splitting, lazy loading, and minification), and optimized rendering paths yield the most significant performance improvements, correlating strongly with enhanced user perception. However, implementation is frequently hindered by organizational challenges such as time constraints due to feature prioritization, a lack of specialized expertise, difficulties in measuring impact, and technical limitations associated with legacy systems. The research concludes that achieving effective and sustainable WPO requires a holistic approach, integrating performance considerations continuously throughout the development lifecycle, balancing technical gains with accessibility needs, and fostering an organizational culture that prioritizes performance alongside feature development. This work contributes evidence-based insights bridging technical frontend WPO effectiveness, perceived UX, and practical implementation realities, offering guidance for developers and organizations aiming to build faster, more efficient, and user-centric web applications through targeted client-side optimizations
Digital Technologies as a Driver of Growth Aspirations? - an analysis of firms in Sweden
No full textDo firms’ investments in digital technologies leave a footprint in their growth aspirations? We employ a unique survey of more than 4,000 firms in Sweden to investigate whether firms that invest in software development are more likely to aspire to grow. There is a positive relationship between software development and growth aspirations, and firms that develop software are particularly more likely to aspire to grow through internationalization, i.e. expanding on new markets within as well as outside the European Union. Even after controlling for innovation, the result shows that for a wide array of firms, software development has become an essential input in the pursuit of growth and internationalization
Introducing Code Quality at CS1 Level : Examples and Activities
No full textCharacterising code quality is a challenge that was addressed by a previous ITiCSE Working Group (Börstler et al., 2017). As emerged from that study, educators, developers, and students have different perceptions of the aspects involved. The perception of code quality by CS1 students develops from the feedback they receive when submitting practical work. As a consequence of increasingly large classes and the widespread use of autograders, student code is predominantly assessed based on functional correctness, emphasising a machine-oriented perspective with scarce or no feedback given about human-oriented aspects of code quality. Such limited perception of code quality may negatively impact how students understand, create, and interact with code artefacts. Although Börstler et al. concluded that "code quality should be discussed more thoroughly in educational programs", the lack of materials and time constraints have slowed down progress in that regard. The goal of this Working Group is to support CS1 instructors who want to introduce a broader perspective on code quality in their classroom by providing a curated list of examples and activities suitable for novices. In order to achieve this goal, we have extracted from the CS education literature a range of examples and activities, which have then been analyzed and organized in terms of code quality dimensions. We have also mapped the topics covered in those materials to existing taxonomies relevant to code quality in CS1. Based on this work, we provide (1) a catalog of examples that illustrates the range of quality defects that could be addressed at the CS1 level and (2) a sample set of activities devised to introduce code quality to CS1 students. These materials have the potential to help educators address the subject in more depth
Entreprenörskap : Den bortglömda produktivitetsfaktorn
No full textEntreprenörer har specifika färdigheter som skiljer sig från de som förvärvats genom utbildning eller tidigare anställning. Entreprenöriella förmågor och erfarenheter utgör ett slags humankapital och bör ses som en separat produktionsfaktor i en modern ekonomi. I en rapport från Entreprenörskapsforum, framtagen på uppdrag av Produktivitetskommissionen, argumenteras för en politik med brett och tydligt entreprenörskapsperspektiv som främjar produktivitetsvinster från det entreprenöriella humankapitalet
User feedback in continuous software engineering : revealing the state-of-practice
No full textContext: Organizations opt for continuous delivery of incremental updates to deal with uncertainty and minimize waste. However, applying continuous engineering (CSE) practices requires a continuous feedback loop with input from customers and end-users. Challenges: It becomes increasingly challenging to apply traditional requirements elicitation and validation techniques with ever-shrinking software delivery cycles. At the same time, frequent deliveries generate an abundance of usage data and telemetry informing engineering teams of end-user behavior. The literature describing how practitioners work with user feedback in CSE, is limited. Objectives: We aim to explore the state of practice related to utilization of user feedback in CSE. Specifically, what practices are used, how, and the shortcomings of these practices. Method: We conduct a qualitative survey and report analysis from 21 interviews in 13 product development companies. We apply thematic and cross-case analysis to interpret the data. Results: Based on our earlier work we suggest a conceptual model of how user feedback is utilized in CSE. We further report the identified challenges with the continuous collection and analysis of user feedback and identify implications for practice. Conclusions: Companies use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to infer end-user preferences. At the same time, continuous collection, analysis, interpretation, and use of data in decisions are problematic. The challenges pertain to selecting the right metrics and analysis techniques, resource allocation, and difficulties in accessing vaguely defined user groups. Our advice to practitioners in CSE is to ensure sufficient resources and effort for interpretation of the feedback, which can be facilitated by telemetry dashboards.
Predicting Public Violent Crime Using Register and OpenStreetMap Data : A Risk Terrain Modeling Approach Across Three Cities of Varying Size
No full textThe aim of the current study is to estimate whether spatial data on place features from OpenStreetMap (OSM) produce results similar to those when employing register data to predict future violent crime in public across three Swedish cities of varying sizes. Using violent crime in public as an outcome, four models for each city are produced using a Risk Terrain Modeling approach. One using spatial data on place features from register data and one from OSM, one model with prior violent crime excluded and one with prior crime included. The results show that several place features are significantly associated with violent crime in public independent of using register or OSM data as input. While models using register data seem to produce more accurate and efficient predictions than OSM data for the two smaller cities, the difference for the largest city is negligible indicating that the models provide similar results. As such, OSM place feature data may be of value when predicting the spatial distribution of future violent crime in public and provide results similar to those when using register data, at least when employed in larger compared to smaller cities. Possibilities, limitations, and avenues for future research when using OSM data in place-based criminological research are discussed. © The Author(s) 2024.Data-driven analys av polisens kamerabevakning - Effekter på brott, brottsuppklarning och otrygghe
Simplicity of Non-associative Skew Laurent Polynomial Rings
No full textIn 1903, Hilbert [4] introduced a ring of formal Laurent series with a skewed or twisted multiplication to show the existence of a non-commutative ordered division ring. Nowadays, the rings and their corresponding multiplication are thus referred to as skew or twisted Laurent series rings and Hilbert’s twist [6], respectively. Thirty years later, Ore [12] initiated the study of what he called ‘non-commutative polynomial rings’, today more commonly known as Ore extensions. Since their introductions, skew Laurent series rings, Ore extensions and the closely related skew Laurent polynomial rings have been studied quite extensively (see e.g. [3, 6, 7] for comprehensive introductions). Moreover, some years ago, Nystedt, Öinert and Richter [10] introduced a non-associative generalization of Ore extensions. We introduce non-associative skew Laurent polynomial rings and characterize when they are simple. Thereby, we generalize results by Jordan, Voskoglou, and Nystedt and Öinert
Ranking approaches for similarity-based web element location
No full textContext: GUI-based tests for web applications are frequently broken by fragility, i.e. regression tests fail due to changing properties of the web elements. The most influential factor for fragility are the locators used in the scripts, i.e. the means of identifying the elements of the GUI. Objective: We extend a state-of-the-art Multi-Locator solution that considers 14 locators from the DOM model of a web application, and identifies overlapping nodes in the DOM tree (VON-Similo). We augment the approach with standard Machine Learning and Learning to Rank (LTR) approaches to aid the location of web elements. Method: We document an experiment with a ground truth of 1163 web element pairs, taken from different releases of 40 web applications, to compare the robustness of the algorithms to locator weight change, and the performance of LTR approaches in terms of MeanRank and PctAtN. Results: Using LTR algorithms, we obtain a maximum probability of finding the correct target at the first position of 88.4% (lowest 82.57%), and among the first three positions of 94.79% (lowest 91.86%). The best mean rank of the correct candidate is 1.57. Conclusion: The similarity-based approach proved to be highly dependable in the context of web application testing, where a low percentage of matching errors can still be accepted