Slashdot Mirror

cconnell sends in a piece he wrote for Dr. Dobb's which "argues that software development will never be a fully formal, rigorous discipline, and the reason is that software engineering involves humans as central to the process." Quoting: "Software maintainability, for example, is the ability of people to understand, find, and repair defects in a software system. The maintainability of software may be influenced by some formal notions of computer science — perhaps the cyclomatic complexity of the software's control graph. But maintainability crucially involves humans, and their ability to grasp the meaning and intention of source code. The question of whether a particular software system is highly maintainable cannot be answered just by mechanically examining the software. The same is true for safety. Researchers have used some formal methods to learn about a software system's impact on people's health and property. But no discussion of software safety is complete without appeal to the human component of the system under examination."

cconnell writes "I am working on a PhD in software engineering at Tufts University. My interest are the general principles of good software design, and I am looking for links/references on this topic. The question is: What design/architecture qualities are shared by all good software? Good software means lacking in bugs, maintainable, modifiable, scalable, etc... Please don't tell me 'use object oriented methods' or 'try extreme programming.' These answers are too narrow, since there is good software written in COBOL, and by 1000-person teams for DoD projects. I am looking for general design principles. If it helps, I am trying to build on the ideas in this article from some years back."

cconnell writes "I am working on a PhD in software engineering at Tufts University. My interest are the general principles of good software design, and I am looking for links/references on this topic. The question is: What design/architecture qualities are shared by all good software? Good software means lacking in bugs, maintainable, modifiable, scalable, etc... Please don't tell me 'use object oriented methods' or 'try extreme programming.' These answers are too narrow, since there is good software written in COBOL, and by 1000-person teams for DoD projects. I am looking for general design principles. If it helps, I am trying to build on the ideas in this article from some years back."

Slashback with more on open code in government, Intel's new low-power mobile chips, the nature of the engineers, craftsmen or whatchamacallims who spend their days forging software, the CD price-fixing settlement, and more -- read on for the details.

Formalization schmormalization. kaisyain's review today of Software Craftsmanship raised a spirited conversation about the nature of software, software engineering, and related disciplines. cconnell conveniently submits a great companion piece: "I wrote this article a couple years ago but it has continued to get good readership within the software engineering community. Should provoke some interesting discussion..."

The bleeding edge costs money. JeffyVernon writes with an followup to CNET's early review of Centrino laptops: "AnandTech published two articles on Centrino today, an overview of the CPU architecture (including some interesting history behind the chip) and a roundup of four notebooks including the new Dell that wasn't in CNet's roundup. It looks like the 4.9lbs IBM T40p ended up winning the roundup, it lasted over 6 hours on battery!"

What scarcity was this exactly? RadBlock writes "Lawrence Lessig is addressing the issue of radio spectrum on CIO Insight... something that was talked about on Slashdot the other day. Lessig states that the spectrum has been defined too generally as if there can only be one message per frequency, when better equipment will vastly increase the amount of 'spectrum' that is usable."

I like that phrase "general welfare." We've mentioned eGovOS several times before -- now, here's a last-minute announcement that may be of interest: free registration is still open for next week's (March 17-19) eGovOS conference in Washington D.C., "Open Standards/Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU." Perhaps some folks there ought to consider the question eugene ts wong raised the other day, namely, Which North American government offices won't move to Linux? Someone needs to set up a big map with different colored countries and states!

Who's laughing and where is his bank? deelowe writes "From ars. Back in September we reported on a class action suit leveled at a number of Music industry players that accused them of anti-competitive price-fixing. Back in January, we reported that victims of said price fixing could hit this website and sign up (too late now), and eventually receive up to $20 in the settlement, provided of course that you had actually purchased a CD between January 1 1995 and December 22, 2000. 3.5 million Americans made their way to the on-line form, and it appears that victims will receive $12.60 apiece, should a judge approve it."

They still have a while to go ... sp1nl0ck writes CNet News.com.com.com are reporting that The Neo Project guys have restarted the attempt to crack the 2048-bit XBox key following advice from their lawyers. CNet are citing a link to Operation Project X, but it was a bit temperamental in loading earlier. Maybe it's been CNetted..."

I'll still think of it as the GIMP for a few years ;) Agermain writes "CinePaint has just released its first Windows build. From their website: "CinePaint is an open source painting program used by motion picture studios to retouch images in 35mm films. It was formerly called Film Gimp. It has been used in a dozen feature films including Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo, and the Fast & the Furious... This first Windows beta release is mainly intended for developers and testers.""

cconnell writes "In my last article, I presented the idea that all commercial source code should be open. In other words, part of the delivery package for any software purchase should be a copy of the source files. If everyone saw software vendors' design and coding, the vendors might stop shipping us such lousy programs. The article generated a fair amount of controversy. My latest piece follows up on this idea and includes a few adjustments that respond to reader feedback."

cconnell writes "The Handbook of Applied Cryptography is now available free (for personal use) on the Internet. This is a $100 book. Note also the companion C source code for most of the crypto algorithms, written by James Pate Williams. There is some very cool code here!"

Charles Connell writes: "What makes a programmer highly productive? Is it lines of code per day? Lines of good code? In this article, I examine the concept of software productivity. I look at some of the standard definitions for productivity and show why they are wrong. I then propose a new definition that captures what programming really is about." Read on for Connell's stab at a better way of evaluating the worth of programmer time. CT Originally the contents of an article were here but there was a communication problem resulting in us thinking we were given permission to print the article here. Now that things have been cleared up, we've linked the original article which you can read instead. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Charles Connell submitted this analysis on software estimation, a topic which keeps coming up because it affects so many many programmers. Read this post about J.P. Lewis's earlier piece as well, if you'd like more background information.

Slashback with more on Wesley Crusher; overclocking new Athlons the kindler, gentler way; building silent PCs for the more ambitious; software that stinks; and more -- just read on for the details.

That fetid odor continues to rise. cconnell writes "In September, Slashdot and Developer.com were kind enough to publish an article I wrote titled Most Software Stinks!. The article generated 748 comments on slashdot, making it one of the most active stories in recent months. Here is a follow up piece I wrote which responds to some of the comments."

Silence, fool! The Panther! writes "Here's an article I wrote that shows step by step how to achieve some measure of silence in my home office. It's different from most in that it approaches damping existing hardware rather than buying new. Some ideas were suggestions of Slashdot readers from a previous article. Lots of photos for the reading-impaired." Hemos may have been going for a rather normal-looking but quiet PC, but The Panther sure isn't.

Step 39: With your dremel strapped to the hamster, gently nudge the billiard ball ... Now that the famous pencil trick isn't an option for would-be AMD overclockers, more complicated means have been found to unlock and reclock. Carlos writes: "I saw that you have a scoopage on the unlocking of the Athlon XP by Tom's Hardware and there is a better and more reversible way by VR-Zone."

200 years is a long time even for a Congressman. Michael H. writes "Woohoo! Congress has given a $30 million shot in the arm to the Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission, previously feared canceled. CNN story here. There's still no guarantee that it won't be canceled later, but at least Congress is listening to the fact that it would take ~200 years for the next window if we missed this one."

Hey, that guy's too old to be a kernel maintainer -- we'll make him an actor. bahamat wrote yesterday: "I'm hanging out in Wil Wheaton's chat room (#rfb on undernet) and he's just announced that he's going to be making a cameo as Wesley Crusher in the new Star Trek X." Apparently, the news hit quite a few readers, too -- and for those who haven't, check out our interview with Wil. Maybe he'll get to be on The Tick, too.

Slashback brings you some follow-ups tonight about Gartner's recommendation to dump IIS, Charles Connell vs. Eric S. Raymond on Open Source project management, xStore and the GPL, and (yes) the results of Deep Space 1's latest Final Mission.

Microsoft is just as secure as the competition, says Microsoft. Jon_E writes: "According to this article Microsoft is responding to the Gartner Report which recommends that enterprises drop IIS by claiming unfair targeting due to their popularity."

Whether because of better-trained or more vigilant administrators, or some other factors, the Apache servers running many web sites certainly haven't seen the devastating outages in the past month (Code Red, Nimda) as certain large IIS installations have.

If animated, this might make a really good Saturday cartoon. cconnell writes "Last September, slashdot published my critique of Eric Raymond's essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar. There was a lively (and sometimes scorching) discussion that followed. Here is Eric's reply to my critique, which Slashdot readers might enjoy. And here is my reply to Eric."

This was not faked in the same studio as the "lunar landings." mrsmalkav writes "Deep Space 1 has passed by Comet Borrelly within 1400 miles and took some very pretty pictures of the comet's core, all while collecting lots of data about said comet. NASA's press release discusses some of the details and findings of the flyby.

This is actually really impressive given that there was very little hope for this mission. From the Mission Logs on DS1's site, '[T]o be honest, DS1's visit with the comet simply is unlikely to work as well as we hope. Many mission logs have described the difficulty of keeping this aged and wounded bird aloft, and the encounter with Borrelly will present Deep Space 1 with the greatest challenge yet in its historic trek through the solar system.'"

Saint Aardvark writes "Space.com has an article about the images taken by DS-1, and they're stunning." And eldurbarn points to the NASA Images of comet Borrelly online at JPL.

How to satisfy customers with license objections, Part II brtb writes: "Soon after Slashdot posted my DiscZerver-GPL writeup last week, xStore added a link in their Download section for information about the use of GPL software in their products. Below is the e-mail I received in response (address changed to protect the spamless). Congratulations to xStore for supporting Free Software and bringing the DiscZervers into compliance with the GPL.

From: "Support" [support@xstoreonline.com]
To: "brtb" [slashdot@brtb.org]
Subject: "RE: GPL SOURCE CODE"

xStore is committed to complying to the full letter and spirit of the GPL. We are currently investigating the allegations of non-GPL compliance and communicating with the GNU.ORG and Free Software Foundation on this issue. We will produce a response to your request that is mutually acceptable to the copyright holders of the programs we have used that fall under the GPL and xStore itself. Due to the recent acquisition of this product, we are still in the process of preparing the required source code for distribution. xStore is commited to bring the DiscZerver product into GPL compliance, if it is indeed found to be not in compliance.

In the meantime, please provide xStore with information so that we can send you, the user of this product, the package that you are entitled to. Please provide the serial number of your DiscZerver product and the 'system page' with your response. The 'system page' is located at [http://your_Zerver_name_or_IP_address/admin-cgi/s ystem]. In addition, please send us a self addressed stamped envelope suitable for mailing a CD-ROM along with $14.95 to:

xStore, Inc.
Federal Highway Center
1200 North Federal Highway
Suite 200
Boca Raton, FL 33432

After we receive your written request along with the above items, we will process it and promptly send you the disc when it becomes available.

This thanks to the mostly behind-the-scenes work of people at the FSF. Congratulations to xStore for respecting the intent of the programmers whose work they're consolidating and packaging.

cconnell writes: "Most software design is lousy. Most software is so bad, in fact, that if it were a bridge, no one in his or her right mind would walk across it. If it were a house, we would be afraid to enter. The only reason we (software engineers) get away with this scam is the general public cannot see inside of software systems. If software design were as visible as a bridge or house, we would be hiding our heads in shame. This article is a challenge to engineers, managers, executives and software users (which is everyone) to raise our standards about software. We should expect the same level of quality and performance in software we demand in physical construction. Instead of trying to create software that works in a minimal sense, we should be creating software that has internal beauty." We had a good discussion on a related topic half a year ago.

cconnell writes: "Most software design is lousy. Most software is so bad, in fact, that if it were a bridge, no one in his or her right mind would walk across it. If it were a house, we would be afraid to enter. The only reason we (software engineers) get away with this scam is the general public cannot see inside of software systems. If software design were as visible as a bridge or house, we would be hiding our heads in shame. This article is a challenge to engineers, managers, executives and software users (which is everyone) to raise our standards about software. We should expect the same level of quality and performance in software we demand in physical construction. Instead of trying to create software that works in a minimal sense, we should be creating software that has internal beauty." We had a good discussion on a related topic half a year ago.

cconnell writes: "One of the most tantalizing statements about open source development is that these projects manage themselves. Gone are layers of do-nothing managers with bloated bureaucracies and interminable development schedules. In their place is a new paradigm of self-organizing software developers with no overhead and high efficiency. There is just one problem with this assertion -- it is not true. This article shows that open source projects are about as far as you can get from self-organizing. In fact, these projects use strong central control, which is crucial to their success. As evidence, I examine Raymond's fetchmail project and Linus Torvalds's work with Linux."

Charles Connell writes "Before heading home for the weekend (and tearing myself away from Slashdot), I thought I would respond to some of the comments made about my recent Linux article. First, thanks to everyone who posted or e-mailed a response. The vast majority of comments were friendly and thoughtful. I especially liked the reader who wanted to paste the article in every programmer's cubicle. *grin* More substantially, here are some specific responses to major points raised by Slashdot readers. "

Charles Connell writes "Before heading home for the weekend (and tearing myself away from Slashdot), I thought I would respond to some of the comments made about my recent Linux article. First, thanks to everyone who posted or e-mailed a response. The vast majority of comments were friendly and thoughtful. I especially liked the reader who wanted to paste the article in every programmer's cubicle. *grin* More substantially, here are some specific responses to major points raised by Slashdot readers. "

Charles Connell sent in an article that he wrote following the onslaught of flames he (and even his boss) got following articles that were critical of Linux. I've said many times that Linux's worst enemy is the army of angry, self-appointed advocates: they don't write code, but they have a lot of pent up anger that often gets directed in the wrong places. Anyway, read the article and talk amongst yourselves.

Charles Connell sent in an article that he wrote following the onslaught of flames he (and even his boss) got following articles that were critical of Linux. I've said many times that Linux's worst enemy is the army of angry, self-appointed advocates: they don't write code, but they have a lot of pent up anger that often gets directed in the wrong places. Anyway, read the article and talk amongst yourselves.