[comp.software-eng] Software Engineering Digest v6n18

soft-eng@MITRE.MITRE.ORG (Alok Nigam) (05/10/89)

          Software Engineering Digest    Tuesday,  9 May 1989
                          Volume 6 : Issue 18

                            Today's Topics:
                    Object Oriented Design - Books?
 Computer langauges and software lifecycle - references request (U) (3)
                      Re: Ada vs. COBOL study  (U)
                         SCCS for Symbolics (U)
              Design Methodologies - Fact or Illusion. (U) (2)
              Design Methodologies - Fact or Illusion. (U)
      Re: grep vs. SEARCH (Was Re: Software Development Tools) (U)
                          Re: Ancient dispute

------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 25 Apr 89 08:09:13 PAC
From: COSTEST@IDUI1.BITNET <Bill Junk>
Subject: Object Oriented Design - Books?

A recent posting seemed to inquire about books on Object Oriented
Design.  I just received a copy of Object-Oriented Software
Construction by Pertrand Meyer. Its published by Prentice Hall and
has a 1988 copyright.  I haven't had time to really get into it
but it appears to be relatively complete and has significant detail
in both design and programming areas.  The language used is Eiffel.
It looks to me that programming concepts are used to illustrate
important design concepts.  Some earlier books on the subject were
really just programming books with minor discussion of design.  This
book seems to have the right priorities.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Apr 89 01:12:20 GMT
From: "William Thomas Wolfe,2847," <hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@gatech.edu>
Subject: Re: Computer langauges and software lifecycle - references request (U)

> The major problem is that very few problems/systems these days are suited to
> COBOL. All the new sexy things (real-time, windows, graphics, ...) don't work
> well in COBOL.

   Don't forget multitasking, reuseable ADTs, packages, true exception
   handling, operator overloading, or separate compilation...

   Personally, I'd like to see a good COBOL vs. Ada study,
   if anybody knows of one (or is interested in doing one)...

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Date: 26 Apr 89 13:04:10 GMT
From: Charlie Martin <romeo!crm@cs.duke.edu>
Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC
Subject: Re: Computer langauges and software lifecycle - references request (U)

As far as a study comparing COBOL and Ada -- I'd be pleased to hear
someone propose an experiment design that could compare Ada and COBOL
(or any two languages) in a reasonbly rigorous fashion.

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Date: 27 Apr 89 19:30:00 GMT
From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!render@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: Computer langauges and software lifecycle - references request (U)

>  Personally, I'd like to see a good COBOL vs. Ada study,
>  if anybody knows of one (or is interested in doing one)...

Why?  This would be like comparing a pterodactyl and a red-tailed hawk.  They
both fly, but they're at different evolutionary stages.  A better study would
be C++ vs. Ada, since they're both touted as being on the leading edge of PLs
for software engineering.

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Date: 28 Apr 89 01:20:22 GMT
From: "William Thomas Wolfe,2847," <hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@gatech.edu>
Subject: Re: Ada vs. COBOL study  (U)

> Why?  This would be like comparing a pterodactyl and a red-tailed
> hawk.  They both fly, but they're at different evolutionary stages.

    You know that, and I know that, but there are large numbers of
    businesses who DON'T know that, and it would be very helpful to
    have a study which would convincingly demonstrate the benefits
    (obvious to you and I) of switching to a far more advanced language.

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Date: 26 Apr 89 15:02:00 GMT
From: gistdev!tasha!andy@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: SCCS for Symbolics (U)

Does anyone know of any source code control utilities for non-LISP
applications on Symbolics 3650 computers running Genera 7.2?

Please respond by e-mail.

Thanks in advance,

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Warinner    | "Semper ubi sub ubi" - J. Caesar
GIST, Inc.         |
1800 Woodfield Dr. | Disclaimers!  We don't need no stinking disclaimers...
Savoy, IL 61874    | ARPANET: andy%gistdev@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
(217) 352-1165     | UUCP   : Euunet,pur-ee,convexL!uiucuxc!gistdev!andy
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Date: 25 Apr 89 14:19:53 GMT
From: Neil Haddley <mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!neil@uunet.uu.net>
Organization: Department of Computing at Lancaster University, UK.
Subject: Design Methodologies - Fact or Illusion. (U)


Design Methodologies - Fact or Illusion.
- ----------------------------------------

I would greatly appreciate references to any papers, or books, which
discuss the merits and demerits of Design Methodologies, and also
any good references to the Design Process (Support).

as a taste of what I am hoping for:


"So called design methodologies for software systems are no such thing
 and are simply notations to express a pre-formulated software design ...
 it is profitable to turn our attention to building design support systems
 to assist with the design process itself."

"Science [and Software Development] is an essentially anarchistic enterprise:
 theoretical anarchistic is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage
 progress than its law-and-order alternatives."

"Software Development support tools do not always have to turn around
 formal notations being used to capture the intermediate results of the
 design process, which then provides input data for expert-system type
 advisors."

------------------------------

Date: 27 Apr 89 16:17:00 GMT
From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!render@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Design Methodologies - Fact or Illusion. (U)

You may or may not consider this pertinent, but a good survey book is
_Software Specification Techniques_, edited by Narain Gehani and Andrew
D. McGettrick (Addison-Wesley, 1986).  The book contains several papers
detailing various aspects of the specification process (which I, at least,
consider synonymous with design).  If you want generalities and opinion
(like those you quoted), then read Dijkstra's _Selected Writings on Computing_.
Also, several software conferences have tracks devoted to design methods
and tools, so look in a library or a catalog of conference proceedings.

------------------------------

Date: 25 Apr 89 04:26:21 GMT
From: Rahul Dhesi <bsu-cs!dhesi@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Subject: Re: grep vs. SEARCH (Was Re: Software Development Tools) (U)

In article <58236@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> leichter@CS.YALE.EDU (Jerry Leichter
(LEICHTER-JERRY@CS.YALE.EDU)) writes:
>Can I reasonably assume that a user on a Unix system has access, somehow, to a
>usable Pascal compiler?  Don Knuth made the assumption that Pascal would be
>universally available when he developed TeX.

Knuth made a wrong assumption:  That the use of an otherwise clause in
the case statement was portable.

This has little to do with the UNIX versus VMS debate.  It does have
something to do with how not to write portable code.

------------------------------

Date:     Thu, 27 Apr 89 12:26:11 PDT
From: PAAAAAR%CALSTATE.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: Ancient dispute

In Software Engineering Digest Volume 6 : Issue 16
Tom Thomson <tom%prg.oxford.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>
makes a valid point:
>[...]byte-stream files are such a low-level
>component that one might reasonably expect rather higher order components to
>be the norm.

I agree that a byte stream file is a low level data object/data store.

However  byte streams (notice the abscence of the word 'file')
are the "Highest Common Interface" between all processors and
data storage devices.

It is easy to write many programs that all use this interface and therefore,
be able for them to communicate via multivendor networks.

Further programs that use a byte stream interface can communicate, directly to
each other, using one processor, if the operating system or language is
powerful enough to connect the output of one program to another, apparently
concurrent program, with no visible intervening data storage.

A byte stream is to software as wire is to hardware.

permitting Software Engineers to construct new pieces of software by
connecting together previously existing components is a vital. Both theorists
(Hoare for example) methodologists (Jackson),and practitioners (Kernighan and
Richie) have actively promoted cooperating sequential processes.

Perhaps the habit of designing and implementing software as communicating
components may become universal one day - and if it does who needs UNIX(R)
any more!

Dr. Richard J. Botting,
Chair, Department of computer science,
California State University, San Bernardino,
CA 92407

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End of Software Engineering Digest
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