Performance evaluation teaching in the age of cloud computing

Abstract

Cloud computing has been one of the most significant developments in computer science of the last two decades, fostering sharp changes in performance engineering practices across the computing industry and, at the same time, profoundly steering research trends in academia. A distinctive trait of this paradigm is that cloud engineers can programmatically control application performance, raising an expectation for computing graduates who find employment in software and system development to have basic performance engineering skills. This, in my view, calls for a broader and deeper education on software and system performance topics as part of the computing curriculum, while at the same time requiring a rethink of the syllabus of a classic performance evaluation module. This abstract presents my personal experience in doing so, including a discussion on the educational strengths and weaknesses of performance engineering emerging from cloud computing practice.