On Mar 25, 2006, at 5:01 PM, Joseph Dal Molin wrote:
> ....and...at the risk of stating the obvious there should be some
> mechanism for evaluating the certification authority and the
> criteria...
>
Sadly, I don't know how many people are even thinking in those terms.
What we are discussing here is software quality (meaning fitness for
a particular purpose), and it may well be that people with the
appropriate expertise are not well represented in this process.
Worse, the current standard (in medicine, one might say "standard of
care") in this area is heavily biased towards testing and informal
(if any) requirements definition. Formal methods, automated proof
systems, rigorous specifications, and so forth are all thought of as
rather esoteric or "academic" (purposely using what Guy L. Steele
perceptively called horror quotes in his thesis!) I know I've written
correctness proofs for no reason but to satisfy myself that an
algorithm I developed was correct. It's not such a terrible thing.
Perhaps medicine is an area where we ought to start thinking about
setting aside industry standard practice and thinking in terms of
more rigorous methods of validating softwares -- which, after all is
used in patient care!
===
Gregory Woodhouse
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"And the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"
-- T.S. Eliot
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