Engineering for Chaos: Lessons Learned from COVID-19

AbstractThe global COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the way we live, learn, and teach - impacting both "how we learn" and "what we learn." Software system resilience has emerged as a critical concept, a departure from historical system objectives obsessed with high performance. In practice, there are many situations when development focused on efficiency, creates a system that is not very resilient. Fortunately, some technology companies have prioritized stability and availability over efficiency in order to deliver to customers a more consistent experience. Governments also value resilience to reliably serve their communities in the face of crises like cyber hacking and COVID-19. System resilience is a topic often neglected in computer science curricula. This paper reports on a recent virtual ACM SPLASH-E Education Symposium panel session held in November 2020 that discussed resilience, efficiency, and the impact of COVID-19 on computer science education. The panel featured Steven Fraser (panel impresario) and panelists Rebecca Mercuri, Landon Noll, Ales Plsek, and Moshe Vardi.