SENIOR PROJECT PLANNING IDEAS

Michael Foster: mfoster_18@yahoo.com


Currently my ideas are vague and not yet well researched. Also it is probably the most boring site I have created. Both will be address shortly. But, until then you can at least see my current ideas below.

1. GUI DEVELOPMENT GRAPHICAL APPLICATION: This idea stems from development I took part in last semester for EEN 511. The project was developing our own windows development kit using a basic drawing library. I got to thinking that why couldn't a graphical software application be developed that would allow the creation of graphical user interfaces by just clicking an icon and dragging a component (when I say component, I am speaking about such things as submit buttons and text boxes) to the location you would like it to appear on the screen? Such software applications have already been in use for web page development for some time ( FrontPage, Dreamweaver, ect.). My idea is to bring such an application to the world of the C/C++ programmers.

I have started to do some research and found out that such a program might be well accepted in the real world. If not by programmers, many members of management would be interested in it because it would (if well implemented) cut development time down a lot. A study was conducted by Brad Myers, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, way back in 1995 about developement of user interfaces. His research concluded that programmers spend 50% of the development time on developing the user interface and 48% of the code they write is for the user interface. A decent software application could dramatically cut such time and code writing down saving the company time and money.

2. GENETIC ALGORITHMS FOR CRYPTANALYSIS: I have decided to team up with John Scott and Brian Smith for this Senior Project idea. It involves the ideas of Genetic Algorithms to develop Cryptanalysis Techniques. More information on our ideas are found on John's page which I have included a link to below.

http://rabbit.eng.miami.edu/students/jtscott