From: Andrew Gabb (agabb@tpgi.com.au)
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 19:13:22 EST
TUCKER, EMMIELOU (CONTRACTOR) wrote:
> Is not the biggest result of most legislation the "law of
> unintended consequences"? Is that not the exact opposite of what
> we want for software? Do most people consider legislation
> decipherable? Is that what we want for software?
>
> The goals are admirable but at least in the US I think most
> legislation fails to meet them.
Thanks, Emmie Lou, my thoughts exactly. Apart from many of the other problems with legal-speak, one of the first requirements for a user specification is that the users both understand it and can read it easily. (I call this 'assimilable'.)
Hence my abhorrence of most forms of 'formal' specifications expressed in mathematical or symbolic form. There's definitely a place for them but not in the majority of projects and they need to be kept a long way from the users.
Andrew
-- Andrew Gabb email: agabb@tpgi.com.au Adelaide, South Australia phone: +61 8 8342-1021, fax: +61 8 8269-3280 ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To send a message to this mailing list send it to re-online@it.uts.edu.au. To unsubscribe from this mailing list, email majordomo@it.uts.edu.au with the message `unsubscribe re-online' in the BODY of the mail.
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