doug@saturn.cs.swin.oz.au (Doug Grant) (09/10/90)
Has anyone, anywhere, obtained an educational site license for Software Through Pictures at a 'reasonable' price? Similarly, for Cadre's Teamwork product? Doug Grant
cml@tove.cs.umd.edu (Christopher Lott) (09/10/90)
In article <439@stan.swin.oz> doug@saturn.cs.swin.oz.au (Doug Grant) writes: >Has anyone, anywhere, obtained an educational site license for >Software Through Pictures at a 'reasonable' price? My advisor convinced Interactive Development Environments, the vendor for StP, to donate a copy to U. Maryland. He will be using the package in his s/e course this semester. We even have support. (!) I don't know if any money changed hands, but I don't believe so. chris... -- Christopher Lott Dept of Comp Sci, Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 cml@cs.umd.edu 4122 AV Williams Bldg 301-405-2721 <standard disclaimers>
tomg@mishima.mishima.mn.org (Thomas S. Greenwalt) (05/21/91)
Today I got yet another invitation to attend a free seminar. This one was for Interactive Development Environments "Software Through Pictures". Has anyone used this? What did you think? I have used Cadre's TeamWork and found it fairly usefull, but am always looking for a better mouse trap. Especially CASE tools that run in the PC world. Thanks. -- Thomas S. Greenwalt (Tom-Too) (612)866-1344 7300 Nicollet Ave. South tomg@mishima.mishima.mn.org Mpls, MN 55423 ------------ Morte nunquam reget - Death shall have no dominion. ------------
jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter) (05/23/91)
I'm not a big fan of any of the pictorial CASE tools. I think they impeded a good engineer, and they give a bad engineer a false sense of security ("I can't have a bad design--just look at these DIAGRAMS!"). For pictorial design work, the all-time greatest tool is a whiteboard in a well-lit room. Indeed, one project I'm familiar with has a room full of whiteboards on which they draw diagrams, and when they're done they have a clerk come in and transcribe what they drew into a pictorial CASE tool so that they have a nice printed copy--they never touch the CASE tool themselves because they find it hard to manipulate, tedious, and irritating. Before deciding to hire the clerk, they were seriously considering just PHOTOGRAPHING the boards. Clearly, the people on this project don't regard the tool as a design tool, only as a design capture tool--a sort of glorified MacDraw. The design takes place earlier, when the designers are scribbling stuff on the walls, backs of envelopes, etc. People always seem to be looking for something that will "automate" the design process. There is no magic bullet. If design was easy, anybody could do it: the truth of the matter is that lots of people CAN'T do it, and there's no reason to expect them to. You want a good design, hire good designers (and get out of their way to the maximum extent possible). But enough philosophy: there is a quite practical reason I'm dissatisfied with pictorial CASE tools--they don't scale. I've used structured analysis tools from a prominent vendor, and any time the complexity got very high (e.g. lots of bubbles on a screen and/or lots of levels of diagrams), the usefulness of the tool rapidly approached zero. I'm familiar with several project leads who had similar experiences: they started out all jazzed about the tools, but eventually put them back on the shelf when they turned out to be inadequate for large complex projects. I concede that for simple small projects the tools are adequate, but, ironically, for projects of such diminutive scope the need for a tools is far less acute: in short, I've only seen such tools used successfully on projects where they weren't necessary in the first place. None of this is to say that I hold out no hope that CASE tools can live up to their billing, just that I don't think it has happened yet. When the tools are able to truly guide a designer toward producing a good design, and when they are able to tackle extremely large and complex projects (which presupposes that someone comes up with a notation for architectural level design), then I'll be more interested in using them. Note, also, the careful distinction made concerning PICTORIAL CASE tools. There are all sorts of CASE tools that work great: editors, compilers, linkers, debuggers, performance and coverage analyzers, CM systems, etc. It's just the front-end design stuff that I'm not happy with. -- **************** JIM SHOWALTER, jls@netcom.com, (408) 243-0630 **************** *Proven solutions to software problems. Consulting and training on all aspects* *of software development. Management/process/methodology. Architecture/design/* *reuse. Quality/productivity. Risk reduction. EFFECTIVE OO usage. Ada/C++. *
bks@alfa.berkeley.edu (Brad Sherman) (05/24/91)
In article <1991May22.223228.5483@netcom.COM> jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter) writes: >I'm not a big fan of any of the pictorial CASE tools. ... For pictorial >design work, the all-time greatest tool is a whiteboard in a well-lit >room. ... I heartily concur with Mr. Showalter's advocacy of whiteboards over pictorial CASE tools. I would also like to recommend the use of large calendars, with the last few months and the next 6 months all simultaneously visible on a wall, as superior to any scheduling software available. --------------------------------- Brad Sherman (bks@alfa.berkeley.edu) And no learning curve, either.
tomg@mishima.mishima.mn.org (Thomas S. Greenwalt) (05/25/91)
In article <1991May22.223228.5483@netcom.COM> jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter) writes: >("I can't have a bad design--just look at these DIAGRAMS!"). For pictorial >design work, the all-time greatest tool is a whiteboard in a well-lit >room. I agree no office should be without several. I have two 4x6 ones at home. >But enough philosophy: there is a quite practical reason I'm dissatisfied >with pictorial CASE tools--they don't scale. I've used structured analysis >tools from a prominent vendor, and any time the complexity got very high >(e.g. lots of bubbles on a screen and/or lots of levels of diagrams), the >usefulness of the tool rapidly approached zero. The biggest complainent I've gotten from designers that have used pictorial CASE tools is that by the time a large project was diagramed, there was no way to get a comfortable overview of the application from them. Most of time the diagrams ended up on someones bookshelf and were never updated as the project continued. >None of this is to say that I hold out no hope that CASE tools can live up >to their billing, just that I don't think it has happened yet. I keep looking though. I think the concept is neat, and maybe in a better environment pictorial CASE will work better. Perhaps in a virtual reality, though then it probably will be the virtual whiteboard that is the most productive. >-- >**************** JIM SHOWALTER, jls@netcom.com, (408) 243-0630 **************** >*Proven solutions to software problems. Consulting and training on all aspects* >*of software development. Management/process/methodology. Architecture/design/* >*reuse. Quality/productivity. Risk reduction. EFFECTIVE OO usage. Ada/C++. * -- Thomas S. Greenwalt (Tom-Too) (612)866-1344 7300 Nicollet Ave. South tomg@mishima.mishima.mn.org Mpls, MN 55423 ------------ Morte nunquam reget - Death shall have no dominion. ------------