Four Macro Trends in Software Development

Ivar Jacobson, Rational, 16. Dezember 2002, IFW A36

Abstract

In this talk Ivar Jacobson will discuss four trends, major trends that he believes will change the way we develop software from being machine centric to becoming human centric. The trends are:

• The long-awaited component marketplace. The creation of a standard for reusable assets is under way.
• Quality from the beginning. Verification will be part of every activity, not just at the end of the process to remove bugs.
• Making the software platform transparent by using intelligent agents. The end goal is layman programming for ordinary business applications.
• UML all the way down. As a first step, UML will become an executable language. UML will also drive the development of platforms, all the way down to the core of the computer.

This talk promises to explore the outer limits of software development.

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• "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" AlanKay

• Today:
  • We have the standard modeling language -- UML
  • We have a standard development process -- RUP (Rational Unified Process) (500 universities teach this)
  • What next?

• Phasen:
  • Req.ts
  • Analysis
  • Design
  • Implementation
  • Test

• Today: To much testing at the end

• "The model is the code"

4 Macro Trends

1. Closing the Gap

• Business Driven Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
• Software Developers don't understand the business (nichts Neues...)

• "Many of us are trained to be good programmers, but we need integrators"

• Component market: Nicht mehr "Make or buy" but "Buy and integrate"

• UML als lingua franca

• "Every language can be misused" so we need a Reuse Standard: RAS (Reusable Asset Specification)

2. Quality from the Beginning

"We have lost two generations of developers who think that development means:

• first indroducing bugs and
• then removing them at the end,

when they instead shouldn't introduce any defects at all."

Das Problem der heutigen Softwareentwicklung ist die Teilung in Entwicklung und Test.

Whatever you do,
you are not done,
until you have verified that you did,
what you wanted to do.

3. Make Software Process Execute

Die Anforderungen an Entwickler werden immer groesser.

RUP will advices geben, wie man gute Software geben. RUP soll das tiefe Expertentum ueberfluessig machen.

Agent = Class mit Knowledge statt Methods

4. Executable UML

The Two-Language Problem:

• The UML "program" and the C#/Java Code
• Two complex environments
• "The model is the code"

C++/Java werden verschwinden zugunsten von Executable UML.

Bilder/Abstractions: "Only doghouses and software are built without a blue print."

Frage von Gutknecht: "Warum immer Visualisieren? Warum koennen wir nicht einfach die Abstraktion schulen?"

-- BeatDoebeli - 16 Dec 2002