Software Theory by Federica Frabetti

Author:Federica Frabetti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
Published: 2012-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

This passage shows the difficulty of describing the transition from problem to solution purely in logical terms—those of the logical ‘completeness’ (or exhaustiveness) of the description of the problem. Interestingly, Dijkstra answers Van der Poel’s question by comparing his own experience as a computer sciences teacher to that of a teacher of composition at a music school. One cannot teach creativity, he claims, nor can one ensure that one gets thirty gifted composers out of thirty pupils. What a teacher can do is to make pupils ‘sensitive to the pleasant aspects of harmony’—but ‘the rest they have to do themselves.’[48] Thus, Dijkstra resorts to individual creativity—or, as Derrida would have it, ‘genius’—as an explanation for what is in excess of a procedural method and constitutes a leap beyond the programmable.[49] Recourse to subjectivity is Dijkstra’s answer to the conceptual impasse arisen by the impossible transition from problem to solution. In fact, such unthinkable passage masks the expulsion of the problem from the process of software development in order to establish a narrative of the origins of the software system. Even more importantly, by separating problem from solution, while subsequently relating them through a series of written texts, the Garmisch conference report invests ‘writing’ with a central role in the organization of the time of software development.

The different written texts produced in different stages of software development take different and shifting forms and names. A complex relationship exists between the first of these texts—namely, the so-called external specifications (or ‘specifications’ tout-court) of the software system—and the text produced subsequently—that is, the ‘internal design’ (or simply ‘design’) of the system. Selig writes:

External specifications at any level describe the software product in terms of the items controlled by and available to the user. The internal design describes the software product in terms of the program structures which realize the external specifications. It has to be understood that feedback between the design of the external and internal specifications is an essential part of a realistic and effective implementation process. Furthermore, this interaction must begin at the earliest stage of establishing the objectives, and continue until completion of the product.[50]

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