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Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no?

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Bernd Paysan wrote:

> The question however is if you by not coding until the middle of the
> project ever get to understand what your problems are?  I'm especially
> against too much up-front documentation: You think you got everything
> right, but you never tried...

Sometimes it is down to how you structure the problem space. The initial 
statement of requirements might be quite vague. There will be areas that are 
not fully definable at the start. I am not against prototyping, actually I 
quite often encourage it. However, you have to guard against management 
thinking they can ship prototypes. Incidently, prototypes don't always have 
to be hardware or code, they can be representative models.
 
> The proof of the pudding is its eating.  A secure payment transaction
> site should be concerned about security from day one.  But the message
> we get here is that you get security by not coding, but doing other
> things.  I'm not convinced.  Security is the most difficult to test, as
> it requires a malicious attacker to pass through.  It's not just a bug,
> it is an intentional malicious attack.
> 
> So, yes, you should think about security.  You should think about
> deliberately attacking your own product to see if there are weaknesses.
> But to do so, you need a prototype!  You can't do that based on specs.
> There is a constant illusion on programming, it's the illusion of
> control.

I would suggest that the security portion could be prototyped separately and 
thoroughly thrashed with malicious attacks. As with all prototype efforts 
you only create them to gather the data to improve the final specification 
(and hence the final product).

> What I smell here is the sweat of fear.  Your buggy code can blow up an
> oil platform or cause a company to lose it's net worth on the stock
> exchange during the lunch break.  The latter actually did happen
> recently.  Because it is so worrysome, you postpone the actual project
> start to later, and be "very carefully" about your requirements etc.

If you have a sound development process (whether it is waterfall model or 
spiral/agile) you should have clear enough markers in there to indicate when 
the product reaches a stage where it is going to be ready to ship. In my own 
process it the check to ensure that all open issues have been dealt with 
that triggers the promotion of the product to final acceptance testing.
 
> And after months and months of specifying, you end up with the most
> expensive bugs you can get: wrong specs.

Which is why you often need the prototyping effort to ensure that the specs 
are correct early enough in the development process.
 
> Agile development isn't less safe.  It's just that you must specify a
> confidence level when to deploy the product.  This seems to be the
> problem, agile development is fast, and after a few rounds, the thing
> looks quite promising.  Hey, it isn't ready!  It's just the first demo!
> 
> Management often doesn't understand that kind of thing.  In a climate of
> fear, people start sandbagging, hoping that the management will be more
> patient that way.  But management is not *that* stupid, either, they
> will discover your first prototypes, and say "Hey, you were just
> sandbagging.  The program already runs!  Great, let's deploy it in
> production yesterday!"

Which is why your development process needs to be clear about what is and is 
not to be considered as a shippable product. Partitioning can help a great 
deal, you don't have to prototype everything, just the bits you are unsure 
of at the start.
 
> Documentation and proper requirements is not stupid.  Thinking about how
> to implement your program is not stupid; taking breaks in between to let
> your brain work on the problems and suddenly find a solution is neither.
> 
> But fear of coding is stupid.  Deploying a waterfall model will result
> in something like "we now use only 20% for the actual coding".  Hm, but
> our process now takes 10 times as long as the agile one, and if you let
> agile programs ripe a little longer, they become stable, too.  Maybe the
> waterfall model isn't really the good thing, it's having more time which
> is the good thing.

There should really be little difference in the time taken for the same 
level of functionality and integrity no matter what model you use.

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett...............<email://Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-510979
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

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abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? gavino_himself <visploveslisp@gmail.com> - 2012-08-22 13:20 -0700
  Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2012-08-22 17:31 -0700
  Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Ron Aaron <rambamist@gmail.com> - 2012-08-23 06:25 +0300
    Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2012-08-24 08:41 -0700
      Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-08-25 03:46 -0400
        Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2012-08-25 10:03 -0700
      Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-08-25 04:51 -0700
        Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-08-26 06:03 -0400
        Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-08-26 20:19 -0700
          Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-08-27 04:38 -0700
            Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-08-27 12:37 -0700
              Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Unknown <dog@gmail.com> - 2012-08-29 18:53 +0000
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2012-08-29 12:30 -0700
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-29 14:37 -0500
              Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Unknown <dog@gmail.com> - 2012-08-29 18:53 +0000
              Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Unknown <dog@gmail.com> - 2012-09-08 22:14 +0000
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-09 01:12 +0200
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-08 18:04 -0700
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-09-09 15:01 -1000
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-09 18:57 -0700
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-09-09 18:47 -1000
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-09-10 01:19 -0700
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-10 08:18 -0700
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-10 16:21 +0000
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-09-10 18:41 +0100
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-11 00:37 +0200
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-09-11 19:07 +0100
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2012-09-12 00:32 -0700
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-09-10 09:09 -0400
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-09-10 06:49 -0700
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-10 15:17 +0000
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or  no? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-10 14:17 +0000
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or  no? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-09-14 11:54 -0400
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-15 02:11 -0700
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-18 12:11 +0000
                Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? gavino_himself <visploveslisp@gmail.com> - 2012-09-14 03:22 -0700
        Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? gavino_himself <visploveslisp@gmail.com> - 2012-08-30 20:13 -0700
    Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? gavino_himself <visploveslisp@gmail.com> - 2012-08-30 20:16 -0700
      Re: abstraction: do haskell and lisp beat forth in abstraction? or no? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-08-30 17:44 -1000

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