Re: Artistically creative expression has no role in software design

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Marc A. Criley wrote:

> After you get past the knee-jerk reaction to Heer's conclusion (which I'll
> admit to), sit back and really think about software, its function, and how
> to achieve _correctness_ and _efficiency_ in design and programming.
> Software development starts to become less about creative expression, and
> more like a quest, trying to find the elegant implementation of
> functionality. Refactoring, anyone?

I think Marc hit the nail on the head here.  Have often been accused of 
  writing "pretty" code. (Or if you prefer, complimented on it.  But in 
my experience, if someone says your code is very clear, it is a 
compliment.  If they say is is very pretty, they are dissing it. ;-)  To 
me the hard work was defining the requirements and ruthlessly 
eliminating any preconceptions that were not part of the requirements. 
At that point there usually seems to be not one best way to write the 
code, but only one way to write the code correctly, in conformance with 
the requirements.

In my opinion Software Engineering is an Art.  But the code produced as 
one of the end products of that art is not the art itself.  It is a 
mechanical expression/evolution of the requirements and design.

Maybe copyright law should recognize this.  That would mean that you 
could copyright code design, and ANY code that was an instance of your 
copyrighted design would be covered by the copyright.  Copyrighting the 
requirements is a bit more troubling, but not much.  If you do a good 
job on any programming task, you may put more than half your effort into 
the requirements.  (Of course, you can instead put much more than half 
your effort into debugging...)

Think about it this way:  What if you design a program in Ada, and I 
make a "work alike" program written in say PL/I.  Did I violate your 
copyright?  I think I would agree that if I "reverse engineered" your 
code--or just read the comments--and used the same design I was 
infringing.  Even if my version used char(*) varying where you used 
Unbounded_String, and so on.

-- 

                                           Robert I. Eachus

"The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too 
much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; 
on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them." 
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821