Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!m.cs.uiuc.edu!marick
From: marick@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Brian Marick)
Subject: Re: Provocative statement
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.133109.19759@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
References: <9776@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 91 13:31:09 GMT
Lines: 25

cmb@castle.ed.ac.uk (Colin Brough) writes:
>In article 2355 of comp.parallel, Steven Ericsson Zenith
><zenith@ensmp.fr> writes:

>> Engineer's don't
>> build bridges to fine tolerances - as suggested by the Computer Science
>> formal methods community. They use over-kill in the main. Materials and
>> designs proven to work from experience and then some!! 

>I await the discussion with interest...

Such a discussion invariably involves many uncompromising people
making absolute statements on topics they know nothing about.  I, for
one, am tired of statements beginning, "REAL Engineers do ..."  by
people who have never actually *met*, say, a civil engineer.

Herman Petroski's _To Engineer is Human_ has chapters devoted to
tolerances, overkill, the non-linear effects of design and requirement
changes, and so on.  It has case studies like the Tacoma Narrows
bridge, the Kansas City skywalk failure, and the Grumman FLXBLE buses.

Brian Marick
Motorola @ University of Illinois
marick@cs.uiuc.edu, uiucdcs!marick

