Re: Software Quality in Science

[Rick <rickduley@gmail.com>]

Bob Spooner wrote:
> In my experience, a lot of the problem with lack of improvement in software
> quality and reliability when using Ada results from developers writing Ada
> code the same way they write C. Then you don't get Ada's advantages and
> debugging is just as much of a problem as with C, with problem symptoms
> showing up far from the cause, etc. If Ada isn't used the way it was
> designed to be used, you get results similar to when you try to use a pair
> of pliers as a hammer.

Darrel Ince (in the Guardian article) gave us an insight into the
problem when he wrote of scientific software being:
"... produced by software engineers who have to undergo a regime of
thorough testing, quality assurance and a change control discipline
known as configuration management."

Two things are worth noting in that quotation:
1.  My reading in the field leads me to believe that "thorough
testing, quality assurance and a change control discipline" are pretty
thin on the ground in COTS software houses;
2.  There aren't a lot of Software Engineers around (if you emphasise
'Engineer').  Bear in mind that Engineering is an attitude, not a
qualification.

I believe that these are two of the foci Bob is looking for.  Good
luck, Bob.