There's a difference between "Aqua coloring" and actual integration into the OS. Using OO on a Mac works, but not as well as a native OS X app would - not only does it not look right, but it doesn't work with any of the cross-app "services" that OS X provides. It's a second class citizen.
Perhaps Apple sees no need to be "a genuine threat to MS". Maybe they don't care about marketshare in the markets that MS competes in. Apple is a successful company that has managed to survive a very long time by doing what it's doing. Apple is "winning" in the areas where it is apparently interested in "winning".
Apple works hard to provide a quality user experience. As a result, the Apple brand means something. That's part of the reason they have such a fanatical following. Their 'product' isn't just OS X, it's the complete hardware/software package.
Seriously, don't they realize that selling cheaper sometimes means bigger profits?
Maybe (gasp) they care about something more than just 'bigger profits'? Like, oh say long term survival of the company? As I said above, Apple has a fanatical following for a reason, and a large part of that reason is their underlying philosophy toward producing complete systems that 'just work'. It's worked for them so far (how many times have we heard that Apple is 'almost dead'?), so why change their strategy now?
It's definitely been going downhill the last couple of years. But it still provides some stuff that Google Scholar doesn't (mostly in the area of cross-references). Citeseer itself is a good service - it's just been a little poorly maintained of late.
Google Scholar is fine for what it sets out to be: Google that restricts its searches to academic content.
Is it a replacement for, e.g. Citeseer? No. But then it isn't intended to be.
What Google Scholar provides is a useful metasearch across existing archives (like Citeseer, the IEEE, the ACM, and so on). It can be handy for finding odd connections between topics covered in different archives. It can also be handy for trawling through those archives using a different search algorithm than the defaults provided by the archive itself. I can't see Google Scholar ever replacing Citeseer - I see it continuing to complement Citeseer.
Who do you think builds NASA's launch vehicles now?
That's right: CONTRACTORS!
Typically Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman, although Orbital Sciences got a few contracts for research into advanced manned launch vehicles a few years back (such as the "Orbital" Space Plane which was slated to be the shuttle replacement before CEV appeared on the scene - note that Boeing et al managed to get a piece of the OSP pie eventually too). The CEV is being competed between a Boeing/Northrop team and a Lockheed team.
Ick.... must learn not to be so trigger happy with the submit button.
John F. Kennedy Address at Rice University in the Space Effort September 12, 1962
President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about to years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait.
But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it-we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag o
John F. Kennedy
Address at Rice University in the Space Effort
September 12, 1962
President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:
I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about to years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.
Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it-we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with i
Uh... hate to burst your bigoted little bubble there, but Mormons haven't practiced polygamy since the 1890's (dropping it was a condition of statehood). These days, if you're Mormon and polygamous you will be excommunicated. The few polygamists left in Utah are extreme fundamentalists that are not part of mainstream Mormonism.
There are plenty of problems with the LDS church. And yes, they do have a nasty habit of jumping on the moral high-horse at the drop of a hat. But it's pure FUD to slam them over the polygamy issue.
Disclaimer: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Mormon.
Highly unlikely. NASA is a civilian organization, tasked with civilian space missions. The DoD maintains its own space operations (the Navy through SPAWAR and the Air Force through Space Command). The military side of space is quite distinct from the NASA side. Yes, many of the same contractors (Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed) work both kinds of projects. But the management and direction is done by quite different entities.
What does "on the same token" mean? Did you mean "on the same note" (i.e. saying something related in theme to the preceding text), or "by the same token" (i.e. making some new point based on the same reasons used to establish a previous point)?
I've often wondered what what happen if all the money spent on "professional" sports in the US was spent on spaceflight instead. Hell, the Superbowl alone would probably pay for several launches.
What does this have to do with capitalism or competition? This is a non-competitive company attempting to turn a buck and get some attention by using slimy legal maneuvers.
Not only is the Globalstar constellation design such that polar coverage is essentially non-existent (a Walker constellation IIRC), the service itself is only supported over major population areas (partly because that's where they thought their market was, and, IIRC, partly because they rely on ground-based relay stations). Despite the name, Globalstar really isn't global.
Your bets bet for truly global coverage is Iridium. It uses a streets-of-coverage style constellation that covers the polar areas, and uses inter-satellite links to relay calls so the service is available globally.
Having said that in many problem domains formal methods are a good fit.
As I said, there's a difference between doghouses and skyscrapers.
It's just an informal hack that may or may not be better than other informal hacks like rapid prototyping etc.
The difference lies in the fact that once you're in the formal domain you can do many things that informal hacks simply do not allow. It's all about increasing your confidence in that the end-result is correct. Using formal methods allows you to firewall the imprecision and ambiguity, which makes ensuring the design is correct much easier. Informal hacks allow imprecision and ambiguity to permeate the design process - it is far harder to achieve confidence in your design if the design itself isn't really defined.
It isn't worth the trouble to do it in Excel, expecially not anything professional!
Whether or not it's worth the trouble depends largely on what you're trying to do. While your particular application worked better with SQL and ASP.NET, there are others that work better with Excel. Just like there are some applications where Java or C++ is a better choice than SQL and ASP.NET. Don't make the mistake of assuming that your problem domain is the same as everyone elses.
I've seen several applications where Excel really was the best tool for the job, and one or two where an Excel front end combined with e.g. a PostgreSQL backend accessed through ODBC was a great solution. I've also seen Excel used for things it really shouldn't be (like orbit propagation and solar illumination analysis - it can be done, but why bother when there's Matlab?). It all comes down to picking the right tool for the job.
You might take a look at ESC/Java, which provides "extended static checking" for annotated programs. It's similar in concept to SPARK/Ada, although I'm not sure how well they compare in terms of features.
The halting problem basically says that you can't write a program that will determine whether or not any arbitrary program will halt. It doesn't say that you cannot determine the halting properties of a specific program or class of programs. Java Pathfinder works. Model-checking in general works, and has been used for many years in many applications. Examples of model-checkers that have seen fairly wide use include (off the top of my head) SPIN, SMV, FDR, TLC, and Verisoft.
There is quite a few reasons these languages are not more commonly used.
Yes, and many of these reasons have to do with the fact that your average code monkey doesn't want to learn something "new", or "hard", or that involves math instead of just random hackery. I shudder to think what would happen if we let other engineering disciplines get away with that kind of thinking. Imagine a structural engineer not well-versed in differential calculus and finite-element methods.
Lets take Z for example, Z is a specification language you state with a form of set notation what the program should do (not how). However no client can read and understand your specification so determining if it's correct is very difficult.
Z is not meant for the client. Z is meant for the design team. It is a way of precisely and accurately capturing a statement of what you currently think the client wants. Of course you're going to have to translate it for the client. That happens in all sorts of engineering disciplines. But if you're going to write specs - which you should be doing - you might as well write them in a form that has a well-defined meaning.
You then do lots of design work about the how, there is no method to automatically move from the what to the how
Yes, that's because what you're doing is called "design". It is a creative process. Often there are many ways to do a task. It's up to a good designer to decide on the right one. IMHO it is highly unlikely (barring the introduction of design AI) that you will ever be able to automatically move from specs to design. That's been a holy grail of sorts in other, far more mature engineering disciplines, and they still haven't worked it out. There're a few techniques that work when you have a limited and predefined set of components, and a straightforward problme domain, but that's about it. Design is inherently creative and very hard to automate.
Then find out the spec is not exactly what the client wanted fix test and so on. This is a very long winded process slow process which in the end does not guarantee any thing.
Sure, there'll be spec errors. There will also be implementation errors. But formal methods have a proven track-record of catching many spec errors - before they become implementation errors - and of making it easier to spot implementation errors. Are there any guarantees? No, of course not. There's simply an increased confidence in the design. And frankly, I don't think the process is as long-winded or slow as you make out. There are a number of well-known projects that made use of formal methods, and yets were able to deliver their software faster than usual, and with an order of magnitude fewer defects.
Rapid prototyping in practice works a lot better you talk to your client get an idea of the data they wish to store and how they what to use it. Knock up some sample throw away screens to confirm with you client that you have understood what they meant, this stage gets repeated a few times.
And you claim that this process isn't long-winded?!
BTW, please note that I'm not suggesting that prototypes aren't valuable. They are. But so are formal specs and models. In fact, formal models can often be used as a first-cut prototype (I've done that myself with CSP), before you even get to code.
While all the time though you have the reference screens, and the ability to keep popping back to the client.
Which assumes that (a) you are developing a GUI intensive application, and (b) the client has the time to be bugged like that on a regular basis. Sure, if all you're doing is throwing together some kind of nifty GUI that does little in the way of backend processing then maybe formal methods aren't going to help (although I'd argue that even then there might be some value in formally capturing any feedback you geet from the client). But it's silly to assume that every developer does that kind of work. You don't use the same techniques to knock together a doghouse
Somehow CS education has gotten horribly derailed, and asks students to combine the equivalents of electromagnetic theory, power system design, and basic home wiring in one curriculum. No wonder enrollments are plummeting - nobody knows what a CS major is or should do.
Oh so true. David Parnas was pointing out the fundamental differences between Computer Science and Software Engineering years ago. Sadly, it doesn't seem like anyone has listened to him. Steve McConnell echoed the same sentiments fairly recently. I don't think anyone's listened to him either. Hopefully the tide will turn at some point, but I've seen few signs of it so far.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a difference between "Aqua coloring" and actual integration into the OS. Using OO on a Mac works, but not as well as a native OS X app would - not only does it not look right, but it doesn't work with any of the cross-app "services" that OS X provides. It's a second class citizen.
Perhaps Apple sees no need to be "a genuine threat to MS". Maybe they don't care about marketshare in the markets that MS competes in. Apple is a successful company that has managed to survive a very long time by doing what it's doing. Apple is "winning" in the areas where it is apparently interested in "winning".
They tried that once before. They bled cash. They abandoned the clone business model. Can't see why they'd want to repeat the same mistake.
Seriously, don't they realize that selling cheaper sometimes means bigger profits?
Maybe (gasp) they care about something more than just 'bigger profits'? Like, oh say long term survival of the company? As I said above, Apple has a fanatical following for a reason, and a large part of that reason is their underlying philosophy toward producing complete systems that 'just work'. It's worked for them so far (how many times have we heard that Apple is 'almost dead'?), so why change their strategy now?
It's definitely been going downhill the last couple of years. But it still provides some stuff that Google Scholar doesn't (mostly in the area of cross-references). Citeseer itself is a good service - it's just been a little poorly maintained of late.
Is it a replacement for, e.g. Citeseer? No. But then it isn't intended to be.
What Google Scholar provides is a useful metasearch across existing archives (like Citeseer, the IEEE, the ACM, and so on). It can be handy for finding odd connections between topics covered in different archives. It can also be handy for trawling through those archives using a different search algorithm than the defaults provided by the archive itself. I can't see Google Scholar ever replacing Citeseer - I see it continuing to complement Citeseer.
That's right: CONTRACTORS!
Typically Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman, although Orbital Sciences got a few contracts for research into advanced manned launch vehicles a few years back (such as the "Orbital" Space Plane which was slated to be the shuttle replacement before CEV appeared on the scene - note that Boeing et al managed to get a piece of the OSP pie eventually too). The CEV is being competed between a Boeing/Northrop team and a Lockheed team.
John F. Kennedy Address at Rice University in the Space Effort September 12, 1962
President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about to years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait.
But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it-we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag o
John F. Kennedy Address at Rice University in the Space Effort September 12, 1962 President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion. We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension. No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about to years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight. This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space. William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space. Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it-we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with i
There are plenty of problems with the LDS church. And yes, they do have a nasty habit of jumping on the moral high-horse at the drop of a hat. But it's pure FUD to slam them over the polygamy issue.
Disclaimer: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Mormon.
Highly unlikely. NASA is a civilian organization, tasked with civilian space missions. The DoD maintains its own space operations (the Navy through SPAWAR and the Air Force through Space Command). The military side of space is quite distinct from the NASA side. Yes, many of the same contractors (Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed) work both kinds of projects. But the management and direction is done by quite different entities.
Mrs. Malaprop strikes again!
What does "on the same token" mean? Did you mean "on the same note" (i.e. saying something related in theme to the preceding text), or "by the same token" (i.e. making some new point based on the same reasons used to establish a previous point)?
Especially when slashdotters are involved...
I've often wondered what what happen if all the money spent on "professional" sports in the US was spent on spaceflight instead. Hell, the Superbowl alone would probably pay for several launches.
I think you mispelled "51% of those Americans who bothered to vote."
Inconceivable! But not literally so.
What does this have to do with capitalism or competition? This is a non-competitive company attempting to turn a buck and get some attention by using slimy legal maneuvers.
Your bets bet for truly global coverage is Iridium. It uses a streets-of-coverage style constellation that covers the polar areas, and uses inter-satellite links to relay calls so the service is available globally.
As I said, there's a difference between doghouses and skyscrapers.
It's just an informal hack that may or may not be better than other informal hacks like rapid prototyping etc.
The difference lies in the fact that once you're in the formal domain you can do many things that informal hacks simply do not allow. It's all about increasing your confidence in that the end-result is correct. Using formal methods allows you to firewall the imprecision and ambiguity, which makes ensuring the design is correct much easier. Informal hacks allow imprecision and ambiguity to permeate the design process - it is far harder to achieve confidence in your design if the design itself isn't really defined.
Whether or not it's worth the trouble depends largely on what you're trying to do. While your particular application worked better with SQL and ASP.NET, there are others that work better with Excel. Just like there are some applications where Java or C++ is a better choice than SQL and ASP.NET. Don't make the mistake of assuming that your problem domain is the same as everyone elses.
I've seen several applications where Excel really was the best tool for the job, and one or two where an Excel front end combined with e.g. a PostgreSQL backend accessed through ODBC was a great solution. I've also seen Excel used for things it really shouldn't be (like orbit propagation and solar illumination analysis - it can be done, but why bother when there's Matlab?). It all comes down to picking the right tool for the job.
You might take a look at ESC/Java, which provides "extended static checking" for annotated programs. It's similar in concept to SPARK/Ada, although I'm not sure how well they compare in terms of features.
The halting problem basically says that you can't write a program that will determine whether or not any arbitrary program will halt. It doesn't say that you cannot determine the halting properties of a specific program or class of programs. Java Pathfinder works. Model-checking in general works, and has been used for many years in many applications. Examples of model-checkers that have seen fairly wide use include (off the top of my head) SPIN, SMV, FDR, TLC, and Verisoft.
Not to mention the fact that Java Pathfinder isn't flight software, but is simply meant to help verify flight software.
Yes, and many of these reasons have to do with the fact that your average code monkey doesn't want to learn something "new", or "hard", or that involves math instead of just random hackery. I shudder to think what would happen if we let other engineering disciplines get away with that kind of thinking. Imagine a structural engineer not well-versed in differential calculus and finite-element methods.
Lets take Z for example, Z is a specification language you state with a form of set notation what the program should do (not how). However no client can read and understand your specification so determining if it's correct is very difficult.
Z is not meant for the client. Z is meant for the design team. It is a way of precisely and accurately capturing a statement of what you currently think the client wants. Of course you're going to have to translate it for the client. That happens in all sorts of engineering disciplines. But if you're going to write specs - which you should be doing - you might as well write them in a form that has a well-defined meaning.
You then do lots of design work about the how, there is no method to automatically move from the what to the how
Yes, that's because what you're doing is called "design". It is a creative process. Often there are many ways to do a task. It's up to a good designer to decide on the right one. IMHO it is highly unlikely (barring the introduction of design AI) that you will ever be able to automatically move from specs to design. That's been a holy grail of sorts in other, far more mature engineering disciplines, and they still haven't worked it out. There're a few techniques that work when you have a limited and predefined set of components, and a straightforward problme domain, but that's about it. Design is inherently creative and very hard to automate.
Then find out the spec is not exactly what the client wanted fix test and so on. This is a very long winded process slow process which in the end does not guarantee any thing.
Sure, there'll be spec errors. There will also be implementation errors. But formal methods have a proven track-record of catching many spec errors - before they become implementation errors - and of making it easier to spot implementation errors. Are there any guarantees? No, of course not. There's simply an increased confidence in the design. And frankly, I don't think the process is as long-winded or slow as you make out. There are a number of well-known projects that made use of formal methods, and yets were able to deliver their software faster than usual, and with an order of magnitude fewer defects.
Rapid prototyping in practice works a lot better you talk to your client get an idea of the data they wish to store and how they what to use it. Knock up some sample throw away screens to confirm with you client that you have understood what they meant, this stage gets repeated a few times.
And you claim that this process isn't long-winded?!
BTW, please note that I'm not suggesting that prototypes aren't valuable. They are. But so are formal specs and models. In fact, formal models can often be used as a first-cut prototype (I've done that myself with CSP), before you even get to code.
While all the time though you have the reference screens, and the ability to keep popping back to the client.
Which assumes that (a) you are developing a GUI intensive application, and (b) the client has the time to be bugged like that on a regular basis. Sure, if all you're doing is throwing together some kind of nifty GUI that does little in the way of backend processing then maybe formal methods aren't going to help (although I'd argue that even then there might be some value in formally capturing any feedback you geet from the client). But it's silly to assume that every developer does that kind of work. You don't use the same techniques to knock together a doghouse
Oh so true. David Parnas was pointing out the fundamental differences between Computer Science and Software Engineering years ago. Sadly, it doesn't seem like anyone has listened to him. Steve McConnell echoed the same sentiments fairly recently. I don't think anyone's listened to him either. Hopefully the tide will turn at some point, but I've seen few signs of it so far.