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Presenter: Dr. Roland Mittermeir - Universitaet Klagenfurt, Austria
Supervisor: Dr. Nigel Horspool - Professor and Chair, Department of Computer Science

Date: Mon, November 26, 2001
Time: 13:30:00 - 14:30:00
Place: EOW 430

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT:

The quest for better software might cause us to reflect briefly on both, the word "better" as well as the word "software". These reflections lead us to consider software development as developing a chain of models - models that vary in many respects. But when talking about models, we should not just perceive of them as given artefacts. To interpret the information they covey, we have to include the producer's, as well as the interpreter's mind-set in our considerations.

Considering differences in the mind-sets of the producer(s) involved becomes particularly important when production and interpretation are disassociated. The separation along the time dimension is addressed in research on software maintenance. Considering software comprehension, we have to consider also separation along a "knowledge dimension." Different minds based on different backgrounds and working with different pragmatics will make software to be a conglomerate of quite different "interacting ideas" expressed in some programming language. These aspects are discussed in the context of different activities software engineers perform throughout the life-cycle of long lived software.

The talk concludes by looking at two rather different topics we are currently investigating and where the considerations developed during the talk matter particularly: Software description for software reuse and assessing the quality of spreadsheet software. Specifically the latter example might point us to reflect on how the discipline (and how CS education) might cope with the evolution problem concerning the methods, languages, and tools we are using.

NOTE: Dr. Roland Mittermeir is a candidate for a Canada Research Chair