HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: eggert@twinsun.com (Paul Eggert)
Subject: Re: Delta (Difference) File Generation Algorithm
Supersedes: <bkK!!7lJ@twinsun.com>
Organization: Twin Sun Inc, El Segundo, CA, USA
X-Newsreader: NN version 6.4.19
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 04:01:28 GMT

bhahn@sw.stratus.com (Bill Hahn) writes:

	Danger!

	There is a diff3 which is part of GNU diff, and there is an older diff3
	which can be found on UNIX systems; these programs, while having
	similar intent, and the same name, take a different number of
	command line arguments -- and can thus cause much confusion.

Wait a minute -- there's no danger unless you're mucking with
undocumented internals.  Traditional diff3 has the synopsis

       diff3 [ options ] filename1 filename2 filename3

and Gnu diff3 is no different.

Granted, Gnu diff3 does differ from traditional diff3's undocumented
auxiliary program /usr/*lib/*diff3*, but anybody who uses that
undocumented program has to be prepared for portability problems,
independently of whether the diff3 is traditional or Gnu.
From: eh@mrih.no (Eilef Hellem)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: ANSI/IEEE -830 1984 SRS
Date: 28 Jan 93 08:01:19 GMT
Organization: More og Romsdal Ingeniorhogskole
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]


	Does anybody have the documentation on the SRS Standard
	ANSI/IEEE -830 1984 ???

	Any references or other would be appreciated.

	Please email me..

	Eilef

 +-----------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
 |                 | E-Mail:               |                          |
 |  Eilef Hellem   |                       |   /|/ /  /  / / _  _/  / |
 |  MRIH           |  eh@mrih.no           | _/  _/  /__/ /_  _/  _/  |
 |  AAlesund       |                       |                          |
 |  Norway         |     or                |                          |
 |                 |                       |                          |
 |                 |  eilef.hellem@mrih.no | Information at your      |
 |                 |                       | fingertips..,I'm in!     |
 +-----------------+-----------------------+--------------------------+
Xref: sparky comp.software-eng:5460 comp.lang.c:20246
From: mark@verdix.com (Mark Lundquist)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.c
Subject: "#ifdefs Considered Harmful"
Date: 26 Jan 93 19:33:42 GMT
Organization: Verdix Western Operations, Aloha  OR

I came across an article a few months back called "#ifdefs Considered
Harmful".  Now I want this article, but I can't remember where I saw
it, or the name of the author(s)!

It might have been in some conference proceedings of some kind, in a
session on portability engineering.

If anybody knows where this article was published, I'd appreciate it
if you would be so kind as to E-mail me the reference!  (I don't stay
up with these newsgroups very well).

Many thanks,
--mark
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: calkinsc@swarm.wustl.edu (Charles Calkins)
Subject: mobile systems
Organization: Washington University in St. Louis, MO
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 18:43:19 GMT

	Can anyone point me towards references regarding the specification of mobile 
systems or systems composed of autonomous components but with a form of distributed
control?  

							Thanks,

							Charles Calkins
							calkinsc@cs.wustl.edu
From: ethan@earl.scd.ucar.edu (Ethan Alpert)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Why is the Software Process NOT working
Summary: Is SWE the only problem like this? NOT
Date: 27 Jan 93 17:08:35 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Scientific Computing Divison/NCAR Boulder, CO

All this talk about the SWE programs failing to teach adequate skills is 
completely irrelevent. Name one field of study that really prepares the
student for the "real world." MBA majors don't just "become" captains of
industry. EE's don't just leave school and develop high end graphics boards.
Physics majors don't just leave school and discover cold fusion. It is just
not practical to expect school experience to be even close to the experience
one gets while on the job. 

If there is a problem it is the lack of really experienced role models for
new employees. SWE is not like any of the other engineering disciplines. 
In the software industry individuals with 30 years experience are considered
obsolete where in most other engineering disciplines someone with 30 years
of experience is a gold mine of usefull pratical relevant information.


-ethan

--
Ethan Alpert  internet: ethan@ncar.ucar.edu | Standard Disclaimer:
Scientific Visualization Group,             | I represent myself only.
Scientific Computing Division               |-------------------------------
National Center for Atmospheric Research, PO BOX 3000, Boulder Co, 80307-3000
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: mattb@plato.ds.boeing.com (Matt Baney)
Subject: Re: Why is the Software Process NOT working
Reply-To: mattb@plato.boeing.com (Matt Baney)
Organization: Boeing Defense & Space Group
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 15:33:11 GMT

In article <1993Jan20.132009.10982@cc.gatech.edu> tomg@cc.gatech.edu (Tom Gale) writes:
>> So I wonder, what happens when they leave university? Do they forget
>> everything they have learned. Or is there some mysterious fact  
>> that changes you when you start working.
>
>I think they're doing exactly what they were taught in the universities.
>
>This is a bit of a generalization, but I don't see much emphasis on
>process improvement, quality, and good software engineering skills in
>general in our university curriculums.  Sure, there may be a few
>elective courses in software engineering or software management, but
>in 90% of the courses programming assignments are done as a complete
>hack in order to meet some short term deadline with the knowledge that
>the code will be thrown away when finished.  My impression is that
>most students view software engineering courses as a nuisance with too
>much report writing and not enough coding.  Hacking on the other hand
>has a mystique in the academic setting that breeds hacker wanna-be's.
>
>So I believe that universities are breeding grounds for hackers.  It
>isn't until they've come out into the real world and been involved in
>several failed projects that the light begins to come on.
>
I agree, in college you learn to hack out code, mainly on your own without
any input or help from any outside people (but occasionally in small groups),
that will never be used or looked at again by yourself or anyone else, code
that will never be "used" by any user.  Yet when programmers get to the 
real world they are expected to work together with other programmers, work
on a small part of a much larger program, write code that is maintainable
by someone-else, or maintain someone-elses code, and finally write code that
will be used and tested by a completely separate group of people.
  
I would like to see a two or three segment sequence of computer science 
courses where in Segement I: programming teams of 3-4 people must build
some sizable application, including a users manual and maintenance manual,
then in the next segments, the programming teams are re-shuffled and the
new teams act as users of one of the applications from the previous segment
and maintainers of another.  And are not allowed to be user or maintainers
of an application they helped develop?  The user groups and/or instructor
would propose some enhancements/modifications that the maintenance groups
would have to implement.

FWIW
matt


-- 
|  Matt Baney         | Boeing Defense and Space Division    |
|  -----------------  |   Knowledge Systems Group            |
| "I can't tolerate   | UUCP:        ..!bcstec!plato!mattb   |     
| intolerant people!" | Internet:  mattb@plato.ds.boeing.com |
From: pk115050@wvnvms.wvnet.edu
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Software wanted...
Date: 25 Jan 93 18:12:21 EST
Organization: West Virginia Network for Educational Telecomputing


I am looking for two pieces of source code, preferably written in C (though
not necessary):

1. Determine the number of nodes and edges that are present in a piece of
ADA code.

2. Determine the following from a piece of ADA code:
   A. The number of unique operators.
   B. The number of unique operands.
   C. The total number of operators.
   D. The total number of operands.

Any help will be appreciated.

Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: Why is the Software Process NOT working
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 23:09:24 GMT

In article <1993Jan27.170835.7333@ncar.ucar.edu> ethan@earl.scd.ucar.edu (Ethan Alpert) writes:
>
>If there is a problem it is the lack of really experienced role models for
>new employees. SWE is not like any of the other engineering disciplines. 
>In the software industry individuals with 30 years experience are considered
>obsolete where in most other engineering disciplines someone with 30 years
>of experience is a gold mine of usefull pratical relevant information.

I'm trying to think if I've *met* anyone in SWE with 30 years of experience
(and who was still practicing).  Maybe one, but even then, he really
started out as a HW engineer.

The pace of technological change is part of the lack -- as Dan Bricklin
once put it "Fitting an application into 4K is a lost art".  (Well, maybe
not for people writing microcontroller software, but still.)

Another is that, unlike in many fields, 30 years ago, even the term
"software engineering" was not well-accepted, so how many people were
properly called "software engineers" back then?  For a person to be
considered a goldmine of information, there has to be a value placed
on gold!

Finally, there is the vicious circle: because of a lack of engineering
tradition, and the pace of technological change, management has a harder
time doing its job, leading to early career burnout for SWE.  I don't
know many SWE's in their forties.  People move on.  Where?  I don't know.
I'm 37 now, and would like to at least plan for a possible exit. 
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com
From: mjs@fc.hp.com (Marc Sabatella)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Reliability of Purify message - READS
Date: 21 Jan 1993 18:34:04 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company
Reply-To: marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: hptrane.fc.hp.com
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1.2 PL6]

: please explain how you can free memory without dereferencing the pointer
: to the memory that you want to free (to be more precise, without
: deferencing an offset of the pointer to the memory that you want to free)

I can imagine a memory allocation scheme that would allow this, but that wasn't
my point.  I was merely saying the call to "free" itself wasn't technically
illegal, although "free" undoubtedly somewhere in its internals would try to
dereference the pointer and thereby cause an error.  I expressed surprise that
"Purify" attributed the error on the call to "free", rather than report the
error as occuring at some offset within "free" itself.  Someone pointed out to
me that since source was probably not available for "free", perhaps "Purify"
simply attributed the error to the call.  I could buy this.  I suspect instead
that the error was reported at the point of call because Purify "knows" that
"free" will try to dereference the pointer.  I guess what I'd like to know is,
if you replaced "free" in the example with some other function, one which did
not in fact ever try to dereference the pointer, would "Purify" still complain
that a bad pointer was being referenced?

--
Marc Sabatella
marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com
--
Amendment 2 Is Legalized Discrimination - Shame On You, Colorado
--
"Neither the State of Colorado ... nor any of its municipalities ... shall ...
 enforce any ... ordinance ... whereby homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual
 orientation ... shall ... be the basis of ... any ... claim of discrimination"
--
All opinions expressed herein are my personal ones
and do not necessarily reflect those of HP or anyone else.
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.specification,comp.object,soc.college.grad,soc.college.gradinfo
From: anton@cc.gatech.edu (Annie I. Anton)
Subject: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
Keywords:  requirements engineering
Organization: Georgia Tech College of Computing
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 01:48:31 GMT

     	        
                            CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

                New Requirements Engineering Student Mailing List

		    	     College of Computing
                       Georgia Institute of Technology


The Requirements Engineering student mailing list is now up and running!
The role of the group is to serve as a forum for the exchange of references 
and technical information, providing an audience for papers and thesis drafts,
support and access to advice, etc.  This mailing list is maintained at the
Georgia Tech College of Computing by Annie Anton (anton@cc.gatech.edu).

To subscribe or unsubsribe, please send the following (appropriate) commands 
in the body of an email message to "majordomo@cc.gatech.edu".
             
To subscribe:    
	         subscribe re-students <your-address>


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	         unsubscribe re-students <your-address>

________________________________________________________________________________

 _   /|                  	Annie I. Anton                        
 \'o.O'   ACK!           	Georgia Tech College of Computing
 =(___)=                 	Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0280  USA
    U    PTHFT!          	email:  anton@cc.gatech.edu                                 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: titus@dallas.sil.org
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Why is the Software Process NOT working
Date: 26 Jan 93 11:52:03 CST
Organization: Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas Center

In article <1k1tasINNan0@andre.d.umn.edu>, kpierce@andre.d.umn.edu
  (Keith Pierce) writes:
> I believe that University courses CAN teach students
> industrial-strength processes, because I've been doing it.

I can speak from my own experience as a student.

  Back in the late 70's, my COBOL teacher at Georgia Tech
broke us up into 2-3 person teams for our assignments.  His
reasoning being that we WOULD have to (sooner or later)
learn to work as a part of a team.  I found it a beneficial
experience.

  My own pet peeve is programmers who can't comment their
way out of an empty loop.  Maybe I was spoiled by starting
out professionally in assembler, where good source
documentation is a live-or-die issue.  I also had the (in
retrospect) good fortune to do a major maintenance job on a
device driver that had little or no documentation; it took
me several months just to figure out what was going on.  My
next project, which provided a counter-example, was on
another driver that had been well documented; it took me
about 20 *MINUTES* to figure out where the changes needed to
be made!

<EOS> (end-of-soapbox)

               * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Mike Titus, Programmer                  /\   Summer Institute
SIL                                    /  \        of
7500 West Camp Wisdom Road            /SIL \   Linguistics
Dallas, Texas  75236-5699            --------
U.S.A.
Voice    : (214) 709-2400             * Internet <titus@dallas.sil.org>
Facsimile: (214) 709-3387             * UUCP     ...utafil!txsil!dalsil!titus

"I can do everything through Him who gives me strength."
      Philippians 4:13 (NIV)
From: rex@iqsc.COM (Rex Black)
Subject: Re: Clean Room
Organization: IQ Software Corp.
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 18:39:33 GMT

Well, can anyone share some experiences with this process from either 
the QA or the development side?  Does it follow the standard waterfall
model in terms of the lifecycle?  Has anyone done any productivity 
studies on this method?

Rex
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: rohrbach@rhrk.uni-kl.de (Axel Rohrbacher [MW])
Subject: Comparison individual vs. standard-software (eg. costs, % etc.) needed
Organization: University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 13:03:06 GMT

Hallo,

we are looking for any kind of comparison of stardard-software versus
individual (tool-based developed) software. This comparison could be statistical
values, costs, percentages of adaption (of the standard-software), etc.

We are concentrating on the context of production environment (especially 
mechanical engineering production). In this area, the individuality of the firms
is a difficulty for standard-applications (e.g. production control systems).

Any help (literature, statistics etc. with source) is appreciated.


Thank you



Axel Rohrbacher              mail: rohrbach@ccksun3.cck.uni-kl.de or
CIM-Centrum Kaiserslautern         rohrbach@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de
Germany
From: mframpto@axion.bt.co.uk (Mike Frampton)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: design case tools ?
Keywords: design case tool
Date: 25 Jan 93 09:25:13 GMT
Reply-To: mframpto@axion.bt.co.uk (Mike Frampton)
Organization: British Telecom Research Labs



Hello

Does anyone have any information on the following tools ?  

Wavefront
Renderman
SoftImage
Alias

Im interested in details of functionality etc and vendor addresses ... 


cheers in advance

MJF
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.c
From: reindorf@us-es.sel.de (Charles Reindorf)
Subject: Re: "#ifdefs Considered Harmful"
Organization: SEL-Alcatel Line Transmission Systems Dept. US/ES
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 09:47:25 GMT

I think this was in a back issue of .EXE (perhaps).
From: dominick@protocol.zycad.com (Dom Paniscotti)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: SCM Tools
Date: 26 Jan 1993 10:43:17 -0500
Organization: Protocol, a Division of ZYCAD Corporation
Distribution: world
Reply-To: dominick@protocol.zycad.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: hayaku.protocol.zycad.com


As a follow-up to my previous post ( more like I forgot :-) ), can anyone
using ShapeTools currently please let me know what they think of it.  I am
especially interested in anyone who has converted from using CVS/RCS to 
ShapeTools. 
-- 
Dom Paniscotti                  internet: dominick@protocol.zycad.com
Protocol, a Division of ZYCAD   phone:    (201) 347-7900            
500 International Drive         fax:      (201) 347-0303        
Mt. Olive, NJ 07828
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: lfini@sisifo (Luca Fini)
Subject: Re: Tools for determining "code coverage"?
Organization: Osservatorio di Arcetri
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 08:02:56 GMT

Tim Wynn (wynn@cms-stl.com) wrote:
:                                          .....    we are required to 
: show the total number of lines of source code covered by the final 
: acceptance test.  .....   we are lloking for a tool which will
: tell us the number of source line which were executed during a
: particular run.  

here's what you get with "man tcov" (at least on SunOS :-) I hope
this helps.




TCOV(1)                  USER COMMANDS                    TCOV(1)



NAME
     tcov - construct test coverage  analysis  and  statement-by-
     statement profile

SYNOPSIS
     tcov [ -a ] [ -n ] srcfile...

AVAILABILITY
     This command is available on Sun-3 and Sun-4 systems only.

DESCRIPTION
     tcov produces a test  coverage  analysis  and  statement-by-
     statement profile of a C or FORTRAN program.  When a program
     in a file named file.c or file.f is  compiled  with  the  -a
     option,  a  corresponding file.d file is created.  Each time
     the program is executed, test coverage information is  accu-
     mulated in file.d.

     tcov  takes  source  files  as  arguments.   It  reads   the
     corresponding  file.d file and produces an annotated listing
     of the  program  with  coverage  data  in  file.tcov.   Each
     straight-line segment of code (or each line if the -a option
     to tcov is specified) is prefixed with the number  of  times
     it has been executed; lines which have not been executed are
     prefixed with #####.

     ....
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Luca Fini                                                              |
| Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri     Tel.   +55 2752 253            |
| L.go E.Fermi, 5                         Fax.:  +55 220039              |
| 50125 Firenze                           e-mail: lfini@arcetri.astro.it |
| Italia                                                                 |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Hungarian notation
Keywords: FAQ
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 20:29:58 GMT

From the FAQ:
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Subject: What is 'Hungarian Notation'?
>Date: 19 Sep 1991
>
>
>(see also the archive file "hungarian") A naming convention for C code.  See
>Charles Simonyi and Martin Heller, "The Hungarian Revolution", BYTE, Aug. 1991
>(vol. 16, no. 8).  There are other naming conventions;  see, e.g.  "A Guide to
>Natural Naming", Daniel Keller, ETH, Projekt-Zentrum IDA, CH-8092 Zurich,
>Switzerland. Published in SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 25, No. 5, pages 95-102.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've had to deal with C code written in Hungarian, and never liked it.
What I'd like to know is: have the supposed benefits ever been
quantified in controlled studies?  Someone pointed me to some vague
reference, but I think it was in a Microsoft publication.

At minimum, I think I'd want to see research the following:

	1.  initial productivity: can you write more code, or more bug-
	    free code, or improve on any quality/productivity metric,
	    when using Hungarian over using some other convention (or
	    over NO convention)

	2.  maintainability: can you find bugs by inspection faster?
	    Can you find bugs in a debugger faster?  Is it harder/easier
	    more/less error-prone to add functionality?

In the case of (1), you'd want to have a bulk-measure that wasn't
biased by any differences in code size that were strictly related
to the naming scheme.

One difficulty would be finding impartial subjects.  This problem might
be sidestepped in an odd way: collect two subject groups, one
fanatically pro-Hungarian, the other con, and hope that there isn't
something in their preferences that makes one group more competitive
than the other.

Another difficult problem is avoiding sources of bias in the selection
of examples to work from.  My (biased) impression of Hungarian is that
it's a bit of a crutch that helps you work on bad code -- by encoding
lots of context that really should be near at hand in the code, anyway.
How do you reasonably control for this?

Any pointers?
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: samuel@shemp.cs.wisc.edu (Samuel Bates)
Subject: Test Data Generation Tool Needed
Cc: samuel@cs.wisc.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Madison -- Computer Sciences Dept.
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 22:52:29 GMT

I am looking for a publicly available tool that generates test data for a
program using symbolic execution.  I have read about tools by various
people (e.g., Ramamoorthy's CASEGEN, King's EFFIGY), but the papers 
describing them were written mostly in the late 1970's, and I do not know
if they are available now.  I would like to get the source code for the
tool, since I intend to modify it to investigate an idea I have for making
it more efficient.  If anyone knows of such a tool or has one that I can use,
I would appreciate knowing about it.  I will summarize any useful information
that I receive and post it to the net.  Thank you.

Samuel Bates (samuel@cs.wisc.edu)
University of Wisconsin-Madison