larry@VLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV (03/04/89)
I've talked to many programmers who started out as hardware
engineers or who work with software systems that are heavily
hardware-oriented. I tell them that Ada is a programming language
that includes capabilities that hardware engineers have long had,
such as standard, parameterized interfaces; modularity; and
automated checking. Put this way, generics, packages, and strong
type-checking makes perfect sense to most of them.
For that matter, I sometimes wonder what is so difficult about the
more basic ideas behind software engineering. Isn't it obvious
that hard problems have to be treated in a "divide and conquer"
fashion? That even the most brilliant solutions have costs as well
as benefits? That every boring, fiddling detail that a computer
can handle leaves humans to do the fun things?
Do we really need an entire course in software or any other kind
of engineering?
Larry @ vlsi.jpl.nasa.gov