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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public From: jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) Subject: Re: Software Engineering and Dreamers Date: 1997/06/02 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 246285421 Distribution: world References: <5md1fl$9f4@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> <338A2D0D.5B14@ix.netcom.com> <5meuvm$hpf@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> <01bc6d40$96100ca0$LocalHost@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> Organization: PSI Public Usenet Link Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-06-02T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <01bc6d40$96100ca0$LocalHost@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> "Nick Roberts" writes: > And yet, a typical piece of software has _thousands of times_ as many > working parts as any car (since every single instruction in a piece of > software is a working part (yes it really is)). In fact, cars nowadays have I've always been surprised when people make this utterly bogus argument. If you are going to include "all the instructions or all the statements, or whatnot", then in any reasonable comparison you need to include all the _molecules_ of the car. Of which there are, ahem, quite a few more than all the software "instructions" ever written (and probably ever likely to be written in total). This seems completely reasonable: all the materials engineering and chemistry is an effort to get the actual physical stuff to work/behave/function as required. > In short, the skills of software engineering are remarkably similar to > those of other branches of engineering. These professions have come from Agreed. But, unfortunately, there has been no exploration of the analog of such engineering for software artifacts. /Jon -- Jon Anthony Organon Motives, Inc. Belmont, MA 02178 617.484.3383 jsa@organon.com