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From: jgn@nvuxr.UUCP (Joe Niederberger)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Information Systems is an Engineering Discipline
Message-ID: <1325@nvuxr.UUCP>
Date: 5 Oct 89 14:16:52 GMT
References: <592@halley.UUCP> <34371@regenmeister.uucp> <1142@svx.SV.DG.COM>
Reply-To: jgn@nvuxr.UUCP (22169-Joe Niederberger)
Distribution: comp.edu
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Lines: 21

In article <1142@svx.SV.DG.COM> gary@svx.SV.DG.COM () writes:
>In article <34371@regenmeister.uucp> chrisp@regenmeister.uucp (Chris Prael) writes:

>Engineers deal with systems that have a finite (possibly large) number of states
>so they can actually test or at least simulate all of them.

So how is this different from computerized systems ? Anyways, I always
thought that "real engineers" used continuous models (i.e., differential
equations) for many systems of concern.

>But look at a simple subroutine with, say, 4 32bit inputs. How many states?
>2^128. How do you test them all or whittle that down automatically without a
>program that understands programs?

Logic and mathematical reasoning have been shown to be equal to the
task. Check, for example, "The Science of Programming" by David Gries. 
Of course, these techniques work best when run on an extremely exotic
type of supercomputer known as the human mind. Fortunately, these
are relatively ubiquitous these days.

Joe Niederberger