I think this idea that people design software and compilers build it is a
very important one. While on the topic of paradigm shifts I believe we
should see ourselves as working in the person-to-person communication
business rather than as writers of computer code. Given a problem, our job
is to describe how to solve it in a 'formal' way that just happens to be a
programming language. The fact that the code runs should be treated as
almost incidental and is just a way of validating that our description is
correct. That's because, for any non-trivial project, we are writing code
that must be read and understood by other, human, coders and the better we
target the coders as the audience the more chance our overall system code
has of working correctly.
That's one of the reasons I like the TDD approach. Not only does it 'close
the loop' in the good-old engineering way, but well written tests
demonstrate examples of how the code should be used, which is often far more
valuable that the likes of what javadoc and co. can extract.
As for UML, I think it has a place, but the code should be generating UML
rather than UML generating code IMO.
Pete Cordell
Codalogic Ltd
C++ tools for C++ programmers, http://codalogic.com
Read & write XML in C++, http://www.xml2cpp.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Cameron" <>
To: "Michael Sokolov" <>
Cc: "Kurt Cagle" <>; "Thomas Passin"
<>; <>
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2013 7:58 AM
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Re: XML As Fall Guy
> This is the paper that got me thinking of "code as design" and seeing UML
> in a new light
>
> http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design_main.html
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 6:09 PM, Stephen Cameron
> <>wrote:
>
>> Hi Mike,
>>
>> I think you are getting to the heart of it, but the analogy I like is
>> making a movie, the final result is very open-ended and coordinating the
>> activity of getting a result very complex, also, whether the end result
>> is
>> a success is very much dependant on intimate knowledge of the humans who
>> will view (use) the outcome.
>>
>> I think we have to abandon the idea of a design and an implementation
>> phase, its all basically design, I'd even go so far as to abandon UML as
>> a
>> design tool, to the extent that its use is premised on this separation.
>> Building and testing prototypes seems to me to be the means to 'explore'
>> the space of possible solutions.
>>
>> This also seems very relevant.
>>
>>
>> http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/hicss/2013/4892/00/4892e842-abs.html
>> http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/hicss/2013/4892/00/4892e842.pdf
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 1:42 PM, Michael Sokolov
>> <>wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/30/2013 9:39 PM, Stephen Cameron wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> The idea that we think we know something well, but in fact often all we
>>>> have is a fuzzy concept (something I learned from my topic maps
>>>> reading),
>>>> this extends to experts as I recall from the days of expert systems
>>>> being
>>>> the next big thing, that often when asked to explain their thinking, it
>>>> turned out the experts used rules-of-thumb to handle uncertainty,
>>>> sometimes
>>>> without realising such. Changing systems potentially challenges the
>>>> status
>>>> of experts as they have to justify such rules-of-thumb. You can also
>>>> think
>>>> of this as unknown-unknowns problem.
>>>>
>>>> I just had a thought: are software trainwrecks caused by the
>>> promulgation of an inappropriate metaphor?
>>>
>>> Maybe if people stopped thinking of designing and building and
>>> architecting - software development as architecture and civil
>>> engineering -
>>> and instead thought about planning and mapping and provisioning and
>>> discovery - software development as polar exploration - then a proper
>>> respect for the unknowability of the solution at the outset would be
>>> built
>>> in to the process.
>>>
>>> -Mike
>>>
>>
>>
>
