Risks of Undisciplined Development
An illustration of the problems caused by a lack of discipline in software development and our failure to apply what is known in the field.
David L. Parnas
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Inside Risks: Computers: Boon or Bane?
Predicting the long-term effects of computers is both difficult and easy: we won’t get it right, but we won’t see ourselves proven wrong. Rather than try, we present some alternatives allowing readers to make their own predictions. Computers play an increasing role in enabling and mediating communication between people. They have great potential for improving […]
Evaluation of safety-critical software
Methods and approaches for testing the reliability and trustworthiness of software remain among the most controversial issues facing this age of high technology. The authors present some of the crucial questions faced by software programmers and eventual users.
On synchronization in hard-real-time systems
The design of software for hard-real-time systems is usually difficult to change because of the constraints imposed by the need to meet absolute real-time deadlines on processors with limited capacity. Nevertheless, a new approach involving a trio of ideas appears to be helpful for those who build software for such complex applications.
This paper compares a new method of simulation organization, called the significant event method, with an old one, called the clock pulse method, using as examples two automobile traffic models. The significant event method is found to be more efficient than the clock pulse method at low levels of system interaction and less efficient at high levels. A simple mathematical model for the trade-off in the relative running time of the two methods is developed. The model aids in choosing between the two simulation methods for a particular experiment. It is concluded that the significant event method can be of value in the simulation of some systems when computational efficiency is of sufficient importance.
On simulating networks of parallel processes in which simultaneous events may occur
The following resolutions were passed at the ASA X3.4 Common Programming Languages Subcommittee during the thirty-third meeting held February 20, 1964 at CEIR, Beverly Hills, California.
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