Re:Lost in Math
by sgt101 on Sunday July 01, 2018 @01:53PM
(#17436625)
This is a topic that really interests me, I'd love to squeeze more info out of you!
Can you elucidate about the sea of measurements that you can extract from software? What are the things that can usefully be measured in the current art?
>made after some analytical process rooted in mathematical and physical laws, from a set of defensible alternatives, under economic and ethical constraints
Ok - how can we do analysis of things that are not measured? In the end all the software design I've ever seen comes down to "this is the best we can do honestly" there could be 100 better ways or this way could be horribly flawed, there's no way to figure this out a-priori.
When I went to college I roomed with a bunch of Aerospace engineers. They spent days and weeks doing structural calculations which were underpinned by physical knowledge of the materials that were in the structures. If the actuator lever for the flap was too heavy or not strong enough when it was made of aluminium then it could be made of titanium instead; but they knew. The sums showed them.
I did CS; at the time we thought that formal modelling would do the same for us.. that is beginning to come back with thing like Lamport's work on TLA+ but I think that the last 30 years have shown us how little we know.
Now yes, people built cathedrals in the middle ages, and bridges. Some of those are around as monuments to their craft. But a lot of them aren't, a lot of them fell on people's heads.
Can you elucidate about the sea of measurements that you can extract from software? What are the things that can usefully be measured in the current art?
>made after some analytical process rooted in mathematical and physical laws, from a set of defensible alternatives, under economic and ethical constraints
Ok - how can we do analysis of things that are not measured? In the end all the software design I've ever seen comes down to "this is the best we can do honestly" there could be 100 better ways or this way could be horribly flawed, there's no way to figure this out a-priori.
When I went to college I roomed with a bunch of Aerospace engineers. They spent days and weeks doing structural calculations which were underpinned by physical knowledge of the materials that were in the structures. If the actuator lever for the flap was too heavy or not strong enough when it was made of aluminium then it could be made of titanium instead; but they knew. The sums showed them.
I did CS; at the time we thought that formal modelling would do the same for us.. that is beginning to come back with thing like Lamport's work on TLA+ but I think that the last 30 years have shown us how little we know.
Now yes, people built cathedrals in the middle ages, and bridges. Some of those are around as monuments to their craft. But a lot of them aren't, a lot of them fell on people's heads.