Programming Methodology

Programming Methodology

The second half of the twentieth century saw an astonishing increase in computing power; today computers are unbelievably faster than they used to be, they have more memory, they can communicate routinely with remote machines all over the world - and they can fit on a desktop. But, despite this remarkable progress, the voracity of modem applications and user expectations still pushes technology right to the limit. As hardware engineers build ever-more-powerful machines, so too must software become more sophisticated to keep up. Medium- to large-scale programming projects need teams of people to pull everything together in an acceptable timescale. The question of how pro gram mers understand their own tasks, and how they fit together with those of their colleagues to achieve the overall goal, is a major concern. Without that under standing it would be practically impossible to realise the commercial potential of our present-day computing hardware. That programming has been able to keep pace with the formidable advances in hardware is due to the similarly formidable advances in the principles for design, construction and organisation of programs. The efficacy of these methods and principles speaks for itself - computer technology is all-pervasive - but even more telling is that they are beginning to feed back and inftuence hardware design as weIl. The study of such methods is called programming methodology, whose topics range over system-and domain-modelling, concurrency, object orientation, program specification and validation. That is the theme of this collection.

Programming Methodology

This volume is being published for two reasons. The first is to present a collection of previously published articles on the subject of programming methodology that have helped define the field and give it direction. It is hoped that the scientist in the field will find the volume useful as a reference, while the scientist in neighboring fields will find it useful in seriously acquainting himself with important ideas in programming methodology. The advanced student can also study it-either in a course or by himself -in order to learn significant material that may not appear in texts for some time. The second reason for this volume is to make public the nature and work on programming methodology of IFIP Working Group 2.3, hereafter called WG2.3. (IFIP stands for International Federation for Information Processing.) WG2.3 is one of many IFIP Working Groups that have been established to provide international forums for discussion of ideas in various areas. Generally, these groups publish proceedings of some of their meetings and occasionally they sponsor a larger conference that persons outside a group can attend. WG2.3 has been something of a maverick in this respect. From the beginning the group has shunned paperwork, reports, meetings, and the like. This has meant less pUblicity for IFIP and WG2.3, but on the other hand it has meant that meetings could be devoted almost wholly to scientific discussions.

Computer Programming Methodology