Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog
Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and more
Bertrand Meyer For various reasons there have been no articles in recent weeks; now we are restarting on a regular basis! A the first topic for this new season, here is a little quiz. I have a function: For 0 it yields 0. For 1 it yields 1. For 2 it yields 4. For 3 it yields … Read more
If definitions are so hard, are requirements then impossible? The trick is that we often do not need a dictionary-style definition of what things are; we only need to know what they have, in other words what are their properties and operations. This is the abstract data type approach, also known as object technology. But it is still hard to convince the stakeholders to explain what they mean.
The fundamental idea behind EIS is to support the seamless form of software development promoted and permitted by Eiffel, where all phases of a project’s lifecycle are closely linked and the code provides the ultimate reference. Since other documents are often involved, in particular a requirements document (SRS, Software Requirements Specification), it is essential to record their precise associations with elements of the software text.
On Thursday, July 5 at 15 Saint Petersburg time (7 AM New York, noon London, 13 Paris/Brussels/Zurich/Milan), the Saint Petersburg software engineering seminar presents two talks, streamed over the Internet: Firat hour: Luciano Baresi, Politecnico di Milano: A-3: A Middleware for Self-organizing Pervasive Systems Second hour: Harald Gall, University of Zurich: Software Assessment with Software … Read more
We have positions open at both the PhD and Postdoc levels at the Chair of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich, the Chair of Software Engineering. As noted in an earlier article, I recently received an Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council (5 years, 2.5 million euros) on the theme “Concurrency Made Easy”; see … Read more
Both Gary Leavens and Jim Horning commented (partly here, partly on Facebook) about my Domain Theory article [1] to mention that Larch had mechanisms for domain modeling and specification reuse. As Horning writes: The Larch Shared Language was really all about creating reusable domain theories, including theorems about the domains. See, for example [2] and … Read more
Program verification is making considerable progress but is hampered by a lack of abstraction in specifications. A crucial step is, almost always, absent from the process; this omission is the principal obstacle to making verification a standard component of everyday software development. 1. Steps in software verification In the first few minutes of any … Read more