Towards a theory of conceptual design for software
Concepts are the building blocks of software systems. They are not just subjective mental constructs, but are objective features of a system's design: increments of functionality that were consciously introduced by a designer to serve particular purposes. This essay argues for viewing the desig...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106499 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4864-078X |
| _version_ | 1826198379152015360 |
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| author | Jackson, Daniel |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Jackson, Daniel |
| author_sort | Jackson, Daniel |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Concepts are the building blocks of software systems. They are not just subjective mental constructs, but are objective features of a system's design: increments of functionality that were consciously introduced by a designer to serve particular purposes. This essay argues for viewing the design of software in terms of concepts, with their invention (or adoption) and refinement as the central activity of software design. A family of products can be characterized by arranging concepts in a dependence graph from which coherent concept subsets can be extracted. Just as bugs can be found in the code of a function prior to testing by reviewing the programmer's argument for its correctness, so flaws can be found in a software design by reviewing an argument by the designer. This argument consists of providing, for each concept, a single compelling purpose, and demonstrating how the concept fulfills the purpose with an archetypal scenario called an 'operational principle'. Some simple conditions (primarily in the relationship between concepts and their purposes) can then be applied to reveal flaws in the conceptual design. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:03:57Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/106499 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:03:57Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1064992022-09-27T16:54:40Z Towards a theory of conceptual design for software Jackson, Daniel Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Jackson, Daniel Jackson, Daniel Concepts are the building blocks of software systems. They are not just subjective mental constructs, but are objective features of a system's design: increments of functionality that were consciously introduced by a designer to serve particular purposes. This essay argues for viewing the design of software in terms of concepts, with their invention (or adoption) and refinement as the central activity of software design. A family of products can be characterized by arranging concepts in a dependence graph from which coherent concept subsets can be extracted. Just as bugs can be found in the code of a function prior to testing by reviewing the programmer's argument for its correctness, so flaws can be found in a software design by reviewing an argument by the designer. This argument consists of providing, for each concept, a single compelling purpose, and demonstrating how the concept fulfills the purpose with an archetypal scenario called an 'operational principle'. Some simple conditions (primarily in the relationship between concepts and their purposes) can then be applied to reveal flaws in the conceptual design. SUTD-MIT International Design Centre (IDC) 2017-01-17T14:45:33Z 2017-01-17T14:45:33Z 2015-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 978-1-4503-3688-8 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106499 Jackson, Daniel. “Towards a Theory of Conceptual Design for Software.” ACM Press, 2015. 282–296. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4864-078X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2814228.2814248 2015 ACM International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software (Onward!) - Onward! 2015 Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Jackson |
| spellingShingle | Jackson, Daniel Towards a theory of conceptual design for software |
| title | Towards a theory of conceptual design for software |
| title_full | Towards a theory of conceptual design for software |
| title_fullStr | Towards a theory of conceptual design for software |
| title_full_unstemmed | Towards a theory of conceptual design for software |
| title_short | Towards a theory of conceptual design for software |
| title_sort | towards a theory of conceptual design for software |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106499 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4864-078X |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT jacksondaniel towardsatheoryofconceptualdesignforsoftware |