Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!hp-sdd!hpcndnm!jad From: jad@hpcndnm.cnd.hp.com (John Dilley) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Development vs Engineering Message-ID: Date: 15 Oct 90 14:18:50 GMT References: <27696@bellcore.bellcore.com> <2450009@hpfcmgw.HP.COM> <84754@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <5682@stpstn.UUCP> <9028@fy.sei.cmu.edu> Sender: news@sdd.hp.com (Usenet News) Organization: Hewlett Packard, Colorado Networks Division Lines: 48 In-Reply-To: bwb@sei.cmu.edu's message of 15 Oct 90 14:09:41 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: hpcndnm.cnd.hp.com >In article <9028@fy.sei.cmu.edu> bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson) writes: >>In article <5682@stpstn.UUCP> cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox) writes: >>This is where we depart from engineering... >>i.e. that programmers feel competent to reinvent >>our raw materials from first principles. >Why does this look like we are blaming programmers for the woes of the >field? Would we have "engineering" if it were as easy to change raw >materials as it is to change code? Would software be as bad if we >weren't cost and schedule driven? Beating up programmers never >solved any perceived problem.... Software engineering is a young discipline. In the early days I imagine those who built bridges and dams would make mistakes similar in kind to the mistakes we make. Without a ready supply of experience and pre-fabricated materials, civil engineers would also have to build their creations from raw materials. Only after many years of building these things do we understand what we need to build a really good dam. And a really safe one. I expect one could list similar experiences in the electrical engineering field. When chip design was young, how often did designers [re-]create cells and [re-]learn techniques for creating effective and efficient circuits? Not being an EE, I rely on the wisdom of the net. Now in software engineering we are faced with another difficult set of problems. As we learn new techniques, and create more library software we are able to move ahead faster and facter. One day we will no longer need to write string copy and sorting routines to get our jobs done (actually, that day is here, isn't it?). My hope is that we will begin to truly REUSE the experience we (as a collective) gain from our software projects. And if we can reuse tools to build more powerful tools we will again be able to make the leaps we have seen in other, more successful engineering disciplines. Software engineering is a young science. And it appears to be maturing slowly from my perspective... but these things take time. It's already possible to see the long way wa've come in SWE -- but the field is so broad, and the problems so difficult that we can also see how much farther we really have to go. -- jad -- John Dilley Hewlett-Packard Colorado Networks Division UX-mail: jad@cnd.hp.com Phone: (303) 229-2787