[SystemSafety] C for OSs

Steve Tockey steve.tockey at construx.com
Wed Sep 18 21:28:56 CEST 2019


Olwen wrote: ³I 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.²

I saw a similar quote but haven¹t been able to track down the source:

³Š change the nature of programming from a private, puzzle solving
activity to a public, mathematics based activity of translating
specifications into programs Š that can be expected to both run and do the
right thing with little or no debugging²


Sounds like it could be from Tony Hoare.

Anyway, I am constantly amazed by how many people resist such an obviously
good idea.


‹ steve




-----Original Message-----
From: Olwen Morgan <olwen at phaedsys.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 12:47 PM
To: Steve Tockey <Steve.Tockey at construx.com>,
"systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de"
<systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] C for OSs


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), ³The
> Theory and the Practice sets Œem up, Economics knocks Œem down².

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







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