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From: mcgregor@hemlock.Atherton.COM (Scott McGregor)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Is Programming R&D or Production?
Message-ID: <25979@athertn.Atherton.COM>
Date: 28 Jun 90 20:17:14 GMT
References: <48951@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <102100011@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <5241@stpstn.UUCP> <7595@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
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Reply-To: mcgregor@hemlock.Atherton.COM (Scott McGregor)
Organization: Atherton Technology -- Sunnyvale, CA
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+-Concerning Is Programming R&D or Production?, Lawrence Detweiler said:
| 
| >Actually I've always thought the best analogy for software development
| >is movie production. It shares many similarities.
| 
| If software development is like movie making, I have had the thought 
| that  programs are exactly opposite to Hollywood sets.  A set has a 
| flashy, majestic appearance from the front, but from behind there is 
| nothing substantial.  In a program, few have any idea of the subtle 
| and  magnificent webs of intricate interactions that lie between the 
| choreography of twirling electrons in its wires to the parade of 
| photons meeting our eyes. ...  A program is an inside-out set.

I think that this characterization underappreciates the technical
aspects of a set.  In order to produce just the right shadows extra
lights may be moved in and hung.  Wind machines, and rain machines
may be used. Cameras and equipment have to be positioned in just the right way,
not only to get the right feel, but to make sure lights and microphones
don't show up in edges of the frames of each shot. 

A set is more than false front buildings just as a program is more than
its window display. When both are stripped from their context they both
appear flashy, majestic in front and insubstantial from behind.  But
in their contexts (a movie shoot or program) they are both subtly beautiful
in management of "magnificent webs of intricate  interactions" and
choreography.
While set designers and programmers find great beauty in their designs, they 
also acknowledge ugly masses of unfortunate compromises to reality and market
conditions that are required.

More importantly, to the people on the shoot, the set has a "meaning"
different from the meaning that the audience feels when the watch the
movie.  To those who participated, the meaning is in the telling of
the tale, to those who view it is the tale itself.  Similarly, to
programmers, the "meaning" of the system is intimately tied to the
internal algorithm and data represenation choices that combine to
"solve" the users problem.  To the user the meaning is merely the
problem solution itself.   A good set is "opaque"--it hides the reality of
the movie production process from the viewer who is thus able to suspend
disbelief and temporarily live in the apparent virtuality being displayed.
A good program can do the same--it can hide complexity from the user who
doesn't
want to know HOW it was done, and provide them a simplified model that
they can treat as if it were real.  Seeing a program as an inside-out set
may provide some valuable insights, but it misses much of what can be
learned from another field that has much to do with managing complexity on
large scales and molding abstractions into concrete realizations.

Scott McGregor
mcgregor@atherton.com