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From: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Theory vs. Practice in CS Education
Message-ID: <5027@ae.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 20 Nov 89 20:09:34 GMT
References: <880@dms.UUCP> <7044@hubcap.clemson.edu> <4251@pegasus.ATT.COM> <4967@ae.sei.cmu.edu> <7700@xenna.Xylogics.COM>
Reply-To: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 35

In article <7700@xenna.Xylogics.COM> Jim Barnes writes:

>In article <4967@ae.sei.cmu.edu> Richard S D'Ippolito writes:
>>In article <4251@pegasus.ATT.COM> Paul S. R. Chisholm writes:
>>>What good are compiler courses?  Well, when writing code I want to run
>>>fast, I always feel more comfortable when I know more or less what the
>>>compiler is going to turn my code *into*; 
>>
>>Nonsense -- this has nothing to do with software engineering, the original
>>topic.  At the engineering level, you don't care what the compiler is doing
>>with the code anymore than an architect cares how electricity flows through
>>wires.
>
>Nonsense, unless your definition of a software engineer doesn't care
>about performance. ;-)

What's the point here, Jim?  If you don't like the analogy, say so.  Mature
engineering design practice requires known architectural models.  This means
that the structure and performance of the models is fully known.

How is it possible to do engineering design if the performance of the model
components changes according to the implementor?  If the architect has to
worry about low-level implementation details, such as how the code is
translated by various compliers, then he really can't be doing architectural
design, can he?  He is really doing model building, not model using, and
this isn't engineering -- it's research.

You are confusing implementation issues with design issues.

Rich
-- 
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers,
you know something about it.
Lord Kelvin						      rsd@sei.cmu.edu
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