From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE, MSGID_SHORT,REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ada-c++ productivity Message-ID: <2927@sparko.gwu.edu> Date: 26 Mar 91 14:57:06 GMT References: <668465900@ <13570@helios.TAMU.EDU> <6514@oasys.dt.navy.mil> Reply-To: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu () Organization: The George Washington University, Washington D.C. List-Id: In article jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) writes: ... stuff deleted ... >>software Critical Design Review. It's likely that the software engineers >>who inherit the code at transition will not be the same folks who had >>the review/approval authority at CDR. The extensive 2167 documentation >>will help close the familiarity gap. > >I agree that this is the theory, but, sadly, much of the 2167/A documentation >I've been subjected to over the past several years has been essentially >worthless for understanding the documented system. When this happens, >the extensive documentation just makes a very expensive doorstop. Hmmm. Deja vu all over again. 20 years ago I worked for a company that required flowcharts and all sorts of other paper junk to be submitted when programs were turned over to production. This was not a contractor, the software was all internal stuff. The gatekeeper of the production library had a little form with nice little boxes to check. The flowcharts were usually generated, after the program was readied for production, by Autoflow. Remember Autoflow? The program that produced a 20-page flowchart on a line printer to document a 1-page Fortran routine? Yeah, that's the one. That one little program killed a _lot_ of trees. Unfortunately I never had the guts to test my theory that it didn't matter if the flowchart matched a _different_ program. I can tell you for sure that _nobody_ ever read the charts; they were useless. The only things that really mattered were the record-layout diagrams, to show the file structures. Unfortunately these almost never matched the code... Don't flame at this fuzzy-headed academic for not understanding. I'm not down on documentation, 2167A or otherwise, as long as it's useful. Mike