Viewpoint Computer Science Can Use More Science Software developers should use empirical methods to analyze their designs to predict how working systems will behave.

The authors present their views on the importance of empirical scientific methods for software developers. They compare the LAMP ((Linux OS/Apache Internet server/MySQL DBMS/Perl PL) stack of computer code to the Saturn V rocket program developed by the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administrati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Communications of the ACM Vol. 54; no. 6; pp. 36 - 39
Main Authors:	Morrison, Clayton T., Snodgrass, Richard T.
Format:	Opinion
Published:	Association for Computing Machinery Jun2011
Subjects:	Computer software development Debugging Saturn Project (U.S.) Empirical research Launch vehicle testing
Online Access:	View this record in EBSCOhost

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Summary:	The authors present their views on the importance of empirical scientific methods for software developers. They compare the LAMP ((Linux OS/Apache Internet server/MySQL DBMS/Perl PL) stack of computer code to the Saturn V rocket program developed by the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA). The importance of debugging is noted, an argument is presented that general predictive models are needed, and some examples of computational models are provided.