Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!sun-barr!newstop!sun!regenmeister!chrisp
From: chrisp@regenmeister.uucp (Chris Prael)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Information Systems is an Engineering Discipline
Message-ID: <34371@regenmeister.uucp>
Date: 26 Sep 89 21:02:06 GMT
References: <592@halley.UUCP>
Sender: chrisp@regenmeister (Chris Prael)
Distribution: comp.edu
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Mtn View, CA
Lines: 24

From article <592@halley.UUCP>, by joannz@halley.UUCP (Joann Zimmerman):
> One other very noticeable difference between other engineering fields and
> computing is in the amount of failure analysis to be found in the field. 

A superb point.  And one I have consistently overlooked.  

This is pure speculation, but it seems to me that there are two impediments 
to failure analysis in software.  The first is my previous point of people
functioning like technicians rather than like engineers, which means just 
hacking things until you have something that looks like it works (also 
known as prototyping).  It is very hard to analize a design when there is 
none.

The second impediment is the programmerly habit of patching things up as
fast as they break.

It would be interesting to analize the reported bugs from, say, a series
of OS or translator releases.

> How would we go about developing this into a real engineering discipline?

Why not follow the leaders?  Do what the real engineers do.

Chris Prael