Introduction to "Software Development Notes"

Document Title:

"Software Development Notes" is a title that comes from the standard practice of compiling standards in a effort where procedural measures are

1. Proposed by the development community when a need is established
   {hopefully in an effort-wide automated forum such as an issues database where the proposals can be qualified and amended until they reach an acceptance status
   

   • based on their "maturity" as solutions, or
   
   
   • the maximum length of time an issue in that category can be deliberated at that phase in the development effort };

2. Argued on the basis of what seems to best fit the development environment (platform, people and procedures);

3. Arbitrated by some uniform parliamentary procedure; and,

4. Submitted to a governing party where all participants are represented so that issues can be

5. Finalized as a Software Development Note that all parties agree to follow as the "local standard."

I chose this title because of my most recent struggle on the Army Sustaining Base Program (SBIS) to define and adhere to the standards of one Software Development Note (SDN) called 'SDN-13' pertaining to the our standard installation directory structure and the use of [environment] variables to specify the area of operation for a routine.

Genesis of SDN Content:

Abundance of prepared materials . . .

When I set out to put this page together, I thought since I had so many papers on Software Development that it would be easy to create the page. After all, I thought, I have notebooks full of methodology formulations, design documents, diagrams and graphs, experiments, teaching materials, courses that I've written, lessons that I've taught {even accomplishment standards and lesson plans}, white papers and proposals of numerous kinds for many purposes and audiences.

Well, think again, Ernie: In how many formats do I have my materials?

Timeframes, formats and procedures

• Timeframes: I have gathered material over a 25-year period; when I was in school doing the one-design-a-day-much-as-a-dream routine, I had my best ideas. A large part of which I have conceived since is just an extension on the principles that I discovered in my "formative" years (regularity in life comes in various manifestations which are only witnessed by us, so I credit myself with more discoveries than inventions). Also, computing facilities were the size of houses and notebooks were made of paper. We didn't even have erasable pens, let alone overwrite mode. Of this tremendous collection, some has been destroyed (the largest part by aggressive brutes and anonymous vandals), some has been shed in transit, stolen in furniture during moves, patented by earlier filers and lost to decay and other natural and unpredictable forces. Of this, that which remains is . . .
• Paper: So you say to yourself, "I'll scan all my paper materials." Oops! What about these wall charts that were made on huge drafting tables? Uh-oh! These typed pages have manual corrections and notes throughout the margins. These documents have pictures, diagrams and drawings imbedded in the text. Sure, it's just a little more work between system crashes caused by the memory-sucking potential of hand-created materials.
• Procedures: Having good ideas as often as we do, the formats of our disks have changed, the more popular text editors and word-processing packages have changed and then of course there is my interminable effort to use a filing system that corresponds to the latest relational technology offered through the years by different vendors in different versions, supported and unsupported. God Bless straight ASCII text. Soon I'm sure we'll have an HTML standard that will effectively encrypt all our material past the capabilities of our last-generation toolsets. Oh, well . . . at what cost "progress?"
• Practice: I have to congratulate myself here -- once I have an idea, I create a system, once I have a system, I use it consistently. Of course, every few years I create a system that, while for every bit it improves performance in my present environment, it lacks features that provide what ORACLE describes as "backward compatibility." Foresight requires hindsight.
• Context: In trying to present materials to a wide audience I've found quite a few things that, when converted from their present format to hypertext, would be reasonably understandable to most cognizant humans in the present phase of evolutionary development (if you believe in that sort of optimistic picture). Then there is the rest . . . essays which would be understood with short perfunctory notation, a few lines of clarification, assorted notes throughout the work, prefaces on the context of the problem, solution and application. I find entirely too many references that require volumes to show where they would apply, what problems they solve and more importantly, to find a places to cross-reference them so that they can be found when needed.
• Personal Conversation and Idiom: Everyone has an unique method of self-expression -- I seem to be particularly gifted in this area -- of the context that I try to provide as described above there are times when anybody who has worked with me closely would understand my presentation, but it tends to alienate others; there are also times that only my closest collaborator (Roger Guisinger [rguisinger@inacom.com]) would know what I mean. I'll spare you these things until he has a chance to translate them and I'll forgo consideration of any materials that only my Mother could have understood.

An Apology: SDN, the results . . .

Now, after so many excuses, I have started to compile articles of interest and propositions of import for actual web page content. Most of the additions will be in this area, while the other parts will usually only be modified to improve their presentation or to exercise new techniques that I have learned whose illusions will inevitably lead me to employ them.

Anyway, I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get to this point and I will continue to add material as my schedule permits. Unfortunately, I seldom get the chance to either expound or apply the accumulated knowledge in my vast warehouse which is all too often dusty from the abuses of an industrial age, filled with the trivialities of employers and gnawed away by that old rat called "time" who eventually gets us all.

<=Back to Software Development Notes=>

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page