Re: Software Engineering: Art or Science?

"Ken Lee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 22:23:28 +0000 (UTC), [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ("Paul E. Bennett") wrote:
>
> >In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >           [EMAIL PROTECTED] "John Larkin"
writes:
> >
> >> Except for hard DSP applications, or realtime closed-loop control,
> >> software design seldom has a mathematical (or even theoretical) basis,
> >> and no predictive theory is used in software system design. People
> >> mostly just write code based on experience, and then try it out. This
> >> certainly isn't science, and barely qualifies as engineering.
> >
> >I don't know where you have experienced software development but it
> >certainly is not that way with me. I do have a theory, ahead of writing
> >code, of what I want achieved by the code, how it will sit on the
> >hardware and also a risk and reliability assessment down to the module
> >level. I often write the definitive description of what is required
> >of many of the sub-routines (certainly the upper abstraction layers
> >and the hardware interface layers). From this attention to detail I
> >can certify that the code does exactly as required as specified by
> >that definitive description (glossary text).
> >
> >> It would only be art if the programs were beautiful, but they're
> >> usually ugly.
> >
> >If the code starts looking ugly you have taken a wrong direction
> >somewhere and should go back and re-think. Robust code is most often
> >simply elegant and beautiful to behold. I think that applies in most
> >languages and is not just a Forth thing.
>
> If you're like me & are a druid, tone-deaf and totally colour
> un-coordinated, then I'd start to rely on software metric tools such
> as McCabe's Cyclomatic Complexity index. Also it's sometimes difficult
> (and possibly un-diplomatic) to criticize a team member's "beautiful"
> code --- it's more palatable to let a utility be the "art" critic.
> Best applied to team members who have "acceptance" issues and a large
> collection of handguns & "home protection" appliances ;-)

One of the easiest metric is the number of warnings when using -wpedantic
with gcc. I often wonder how people can write code where a warning appears
on every second line or so...

We use quite a lot of 3rd party software, that falls into that category. At
another company I had to fix a project. All compiler warnings were
switched of because they wouldn't find the errors in the output anymore !
I think you get the idea about the quality of that code.

Cheers
- Rene