Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!gatech!hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu
From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )
Newsgroups: comp.sw.components
Subject: Re: Reasons for low reuse
Message-ID: <6393@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 5 Sep 89 21:40:24 GMT
References: <765@swbatl.UUCP>
Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu
Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu
Lines: 24

From article <765@swbatl.UUCP>, by uucibg@swbatl.UUCP (3929):
> Obviously, "engineering" is still an art too.  Namely, it is the art of 
> examining a body of solutions to previous problems and trying to find one
> or more solutions which can be adapted to solve the current problem.  I 
> don't see any way to claim that this isn't still an art, since we would 
> have replaced all those engineers with computers if it weren't an art.

   There is a general progression which all fields go through:

     Art form  =>  Engineering discipline  =>  Hard Science

   The progress along this route is proportional to what is known
   about the field.  The continuum indicates the progression from
   all heuristics (toward the left) to all deterministic solutions
   (toward the right); the fields which fall in between the two
   extremes are those for which heuristics are used to fill in the
   areas in which there still is not sufficient science.

   When a field is referred to as an engineering discipline, it means that 
   informal heuristics are on the way to becoming an endangered species, 
   and the software field is progressing very quickly in that direction.


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu