Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!sei!bwb
From: bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CASE - The Emperor has no clothes on!
Message-ID: <7549@fy.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 17 Jun 90 14:44:44 GMT
References: <7486@fy.sei.cmu.edu> <1990Jun13.101122.15604@axion.bt.co.uk> <7527@fy.sei.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 31
In-Reply-To: <5212@stpstn.UUCP>

In article <5212@stpstn.UUCP> you write:

>The paradigm shift that I've been calling the software industrial revolution
>involves changing our reluctance to build up a robust marketplace in 
>well-understood materials with reproducible properties (Stacks and Queues
>and ScrollBars and CustomerObjects) and begin building from these instead
>of reinventing everything from first principles.

AGREED! As a programmer/software engineer/computer scientist I should study
all these well understood concepts but I SHOULD NEVER EVER HAVE TO CODE 
another stack, queue, link list, search, sort, tree traversal, etc..  
Instead I should only have to parameterize (instantiate) a generic form to
get what I need.  Parameterization would include picking space/time trade offs.

>This involves a shift in focus quite analogous to Copernican shift that put
>the sun in the center of the universe rather than the earth. It involves
>relinquishing our belief that programmers and their *tools* (languages) are
>where we should be focusing, and instead focusing on what it will take to
>create and maintain a robust software components marketplace.

Libraries have always been popular but difficult to use due to the nature
of prepared subroutines.  Ada generics as well as classes in object oriented
languages would seem to be a magnitude jump forward in supporting the creation
of these types of software components. I would like to think this will happen
naturally as the productivity and quality benefits of these components sell
themselves. 

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