[SystemSafety] C for OSs

[Olwen Morgan]

On 16/09/2019 23:15, Steve Tockey wrote:
>
> All true engineers need to have a solid foundation in:
>
> *) relevant Scientific & Mathematical Theory
> *) useful and relevant Practice
> *) Engineering Economy
>
> Take, for example, a Chemical Engineer. The scientific and 
> mathematical theory is Chemistry, Physics, and to some extent Quantum 
> Mechanics. The relevant practice are things like waste heat removal 
> strategies, pressure vessels, catalysts, etc. The theory and practice 
> combine to help the true engineer propose a set of theoretically 
> viable, potential solutions to a real-world problem. Engineering 
> economy comes in to guide the true engineer in identifying the most 
> cost-effective one of those theoretically viable, potential solutions. 
> As a consultant friend of mine once said (slightly paraphrased), “The 
> Theory and the Practice sets ‘em up, Economics knocks ‘em down”.

Of course, I go along with this. But I learned to teach myself long 
before there was anything formally titled a body of knowledge. For 
example, I left school knowing how to do critical path analysis, so the 
technical aspects of project management were, for me, a matter of 
applying something that I already understood. It was the same with 
software testing. I taught myself graph theory in my mid-twenties and 
had no problem understanding graph-based test metrics when I later 
encountered them.

Indeed, in the late seventies, when I was around 25, I remember reading 
a report of a talk given by Tony Hoare in which he counselled solving 
computing problems in mathematics and only then translating the 
mathematics into program code. I thought that was such blindingly 
self-evident good practice that I wondered why he saw fit to say it 
explicitly. And it has often irritated me to find that one needed to do 
an approved course in something to be seen as competent in things that I 
regarded as obvious.

On the other hand, having had the benefit of a privileged public-school 
education (which was truly exceptional in mathematics), I found myself 
pretty intellectually self-reliant as soon as I started working in the 
computing industry. So, I'll admit it, I have to confess to blank 
incomprehension of people who have never felt themselves to be in that 
position.


Olwen