Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu!p.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson
From: johnson@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: What's a methodology?
Message-ID: <135300013@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 26 Oct 89 00:41:35 GMT
References: <161913@<89291>
Lines: 23
Nf-ID: #R:<89291:161913:p.cs.uiuc.edu:135300013:000:1138
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson    Oct 24 22:58:00 1989


Maybe I should just quit posting.  Nobody seems to understand me.

UH2@PSUVM.BITNET says
>Was structured programming invented this way?  That is, did researchers
>study how successful programmers work, and then discover they used
>structured programming ,or did theoreticians, using introspection, just
>invent it?  I think the latter.

Neither. Bright people discovered that they really hated unstructured
code and tried to teach their colleagues how to program better.  
Eventually Dijkstra wrote "Go-to Considered Harmful".  Note that the
paper was written after structured control statements were invented.  
Thus, it was based on experience, not just on theory.

I most certainly was NOT claiming that social scientists should be
inventing programming methods.  However, knowing how to program well
is a precondition to inventing programming methods.  Lots of people
who are trying to tell us how to do object-oriented programming do not,
in fact, do much object-oriented programming.  I am skeptical of
what they say.  The only way to learn how to program is to program.

Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign