Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog
Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and more
I recently wrote a working paper (on academic careers) and since it was urgently needed I did not want to spend time on style issues but instead to keep things simple. So I preceded it with the comment “Using he’ as an abbreviation for `he or she’.” I received the helpful suggestion that I could … Read more
I harbor no illusion about the effectiveness of airing this particular pet peeve; complaining about it has about the same chance of success as protesting against split infinitives or music in restaurants. Still, it is worth mentioning that the widespread use of the word “statement” to denote a programming language element, such as an assignment, that … Read more
I am happy to announce the publication of the Handbook of Requirements and Business Analysis (Springer, 2022). It is the result of many years of thinking about requirements and how to do them right, taking advantage of modern principles of software engineering. While programming, languages, design techniques, process models and other software engineering disciplines have … Read more
Requirements documents for software projects in industry, agile or not, typically follow a plan defined in a 1998 IEEE standard (IEEE 830-1998 [1]), “reaffirmed” in 2009. IEEE 830 has the merit of simplicity, as it fits in 37 pages of which just a few (competently) describe basic requirements concepts and less than 10 are devoted to … Read more
There is a fateful ritual to keynote invitations. The first message reads (I am paraphrasing): “Respected peerless luminary of this millennium and the next, Will your excellency ever forgive me for the audacity of asking if you would deign to leave for a short interlude the blessed abodes that habitually beget your immortal insights, and … Read more
(This article is about the kind of French that you find on e-commerce sites these days.) Le site amazon.fr a de plus en plus de produits destinés à des marchés internationaux et bénéficiant d’une présentation en français produite par des algorithmes approximatifs. Je ne suis pas absolument sûr du « bénéfice » en question, ni d’ailleurs … Read more
My colleagues and I have just finished recording our new MOOC (online course), an official ETH offering on the EdX platform. The preview is available [1] and the course will run starting in September. As readers of this blog know, I have enthusiastically, under the impulsion of Marco Piccioni at ETH, embraced MOOC technology … Read more
One of the most improvable characteristics of scientific papers is the graphical presentation of numerical data. It is sad to see that thirty years after Tufte published the first edition of his masterpiece [1] many authors are still including grossly inaccurate graphics. Sadder still when the authors are professional graphists, who should know better. … Read more