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From: styri@cs.hw.ac.uk (Yu No Hoo)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Art vs. Engineering
Message-ID: <3030@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Date: 20 May 91 14:23:29 GMT
References: <1991May13.181826.18832@hellgate.utah.edu> <2996@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk> <19669@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Sender: news@cs.hw.ac.uk
Organization: Computer Science, Heriot-Watt U., Scotland
Lines: 36

In article <2996@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk> I wrote:
>How about comparing the software craftsman to the old stonemason.

In article <19669@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> eaker@ukulele.crd.ge.com (Charles E Eaker) writes:
>Take a look at Ken Follet's  "Pillars of the Earth". It's a wonderful
>novel set in the 12th century and contains an enormous amount of detail
>about the craft of cathedral building in the absence of an engineering
>profession. Has some great examples of how rules of thumb such as
>"To make it stronger, make it thicker," literally fall down.

Agree, nice book. But, don't make jokes about their rules of thumb. And, even
in the absence of an engineering profession - some of these guys were really
good engineers. And even engineering gives some freedom for some artistry,
both of the esthetic and the innovative kind.

I guess a problem with this discussion is that we forget that we may wear
many 'hats' in our work. I don't view myself as an engineer when I'm writing
a piece of code. Coding is a craft. However, I write my code to some design
or specification that may be a product of engineering, and supervising the
progress of construction may also be engineering. Constructing a pipeline may
be engineering, welding pipes is not.

Designing software should probably be compared to designing a building. There
are elements of esthetics, there are elements of functionality and there is
a limit on how much we are willing to pay. More important, one definition
of the term architecture is "the art and science of designing and constructing
buildings". Functionality and user friendliness aren't something added by some
joiner at a later stage.

Art and engineering may be orthogonal entities, but they aren't contratictory.

-----------------------
Haakon Styri
Dept. of Comp. Sci.              ARPA: styri@cs.hw.ac.uk
Heriot-Watt University          X-400: C=gb;PRMD=uk.ac;O=hw;OU=cs;S=styri
Edinburgh, Scotland