Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!rutgers!att!homxb!genesis!gls
From: gls@genesis.ATT.COM (g.l.sicherman)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: software engineers
Message-ID: <534@genesis.ATT.COM>
Date: 5 May 89 19:42:49 GMT
References: <855@odyssey.ATT.COM> <1916@etive.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, West Long Branch, NJ
Lines: 40

In article <1916@etive.ed.ac.uk>, sean@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Sean Matthews) writes:
< I do not share your faith in formal methods or methodologies.  To me,
< the work of programming consists of weaving order with chaos.  ...
< --gls@odyssey.att.COM
> 
> I just what to clear up a point; isn't Odyssey Richard Platek's operation
> in Ithaca (sorry about the spelling) which specialises in mathematically
> verified software i.e., formal methods?

Ha!  I suppose this comes of abandoning the flat namespace.  The "odyssey"
I post from is a macromini used for routine software development.

By the way, we have plenty of bugfree environments here at AT&T, mostly
in telephone switching systems where the least bug is a disaster in the
field.  When you have to be that careful, productivity runs in tens
of lines per month.

As you can see from Jim Perry's story, a programming environment works
very well if each programmer takes *complete* responsibility for her
programs.  I'm not against formal methods, either--so long as you don't
rely on them!  GIGO applies to programmers as well as data; good
programmers feed themselves into their programs.

-:-
	"Hey, Rocky!  Watch me pull a UNIX program out of my
	   source directory!"
	"AGAIN?"
	"Nothin' up my sleeve ... PRESTO!"

		IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
		PROGRAM-ID.  PROCESS-DATA.
		AUTHOR-NAME.  B. T. MOOSE, FROSTBYTE DATA SYS.
		SOURCE-COMPUTER.  IBM-7044.
		OBJECT-COMPUTER.  IBM-7044.
		. . .

	"No doubt about it--I gotta get a new source directory!"
-- 
G. L. Sicherman
gls@odyssey.att.COM