It's been a long time since I've written a CV! and I threw
everything away, burned it. But having had a lot of contacts in these
months, I was asked for my CV in English. So I took advantage of my
notepad to try to put together a time. I wrote "don't waste
time, don't read this, it's for when I lose my memory". I have
published my memoirs here.
https://saintyrieixlaperche.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/mes-memoires-daredien-1946-1964/
But it was for historians, penniless and
ecological ethnologists (the Limousin and the Périgord vert, we
would be ridiculous if we asked for credits to go there to study the
language and customs). It was also for the grandchildren, but I
didn't convert to tic and toc
1946
It's silly! it
wasn't my midwife mother who gave birth to me in the maternity ward
of the hospital in Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche, the town that gave birth
to the porcelain industry in France!
But I was not the new Aristotle!
Evethough I liked writing Aristotle's square in B notation and the logic of predicates
My father was a
shoemaker, a shoe merchant. When I was very young, he also sold
clogs. They were burned in the stove.
The school of
barracks
I went to the
"barracks" school. So young in the barracks! Always on
foot. And my parents never took me to kindergarten, primary school,
high school, university in the Posterior. I would have been ashamed.
We used to say "the barracks" when it was a barracks,
certainly "divided" in two, one girl, one boy..
In "cours
élémentaire deuxième année" (CE2), I had a teacher who
taught us the method of problem solving. It started from the
southeast of the blackboard and went up to the northwest. I think
that Claude Pair in Nancy had the same course.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Pair
and his deductive method (Méthode
déductive) or (Médée) Medea of programming. For the Middle Course
(CM), I had an instituteur "teacher" who pulled the ears,
the hair, manipulated the ruler, but also painted on the walls and
framed with sticks nailed to the walls. He also practiced a modern
pedagogy. His class was CM1/CM2. Those who had finished the CM1
exercises had to do the CM2 exercises, forbidden to watch Tiktok on
their cell phone. And that's how I took my first exam, the sixth
grade entrance exam (examen d'entrée en sixième), a year earlier
than planned. But let's be honest, I didn't plan anything. I needed a
school identity card. My mother took me to the photographer's house
to take passport photos. When I specified the NNI (National Identity
Number) in B notation, I remembered the photographer Later.
The middle school
(collège), the Darnet high school (lycée
Darnet)
My father had
studied Latin. He had to leave high school in second grade. But he
spent his winter Sundays doing Latin versions. He bequeathed me his
Quicherat. I did Latin. The school was called "Jean-Baptiste
Darnet" after the doctor who discovered kaolin (in fact it was
his wife who used it to wash clothes who tipped him off). Later it
was called high school. month.
I repeated the third grade. My mother
told me "it's puberty". The certificate was not given at
that time. Teacher, I had to insist on allowing students to repeat a
year. They thanked me for that. In the IUT in two years, the program
was too dense for those who did not make "dead ends":
general economics, business economics, work organization, general
accounting, analytical, communication techniques, English,
mathematics, statistics, probability, operational research, projects
with companies, operating system, numerical calculation, Fortran, 360
Assembler, Cobol, programming methods, networks, databases, Software
Engineering Methods... and a three-month internship.
I did "Latin-maths",
if I'm not mistaken, it was "C'".
After the "First
Baccalaureate" (at the time there were two), I did the final
year of "Philosophy". What for? The previous year, the
"Maths Elem" had had poor results in the baccalaureate. The
teacher, son of my father's teacher, had not dealt with part of the
curriculum... who "fell" in the baccalaureate. I have kept
my two books "Knowledge" and "Action". It was the
philosophy teacher, Henri Desfougères (he had done his thesis on
Spinoza) who for the first time spoke to us about sets and tables of
truth! At that time, I didn't know what the "preparatory
classes" were. I knew what medical studies were like. But having
a very bad memory (a pain when you like history a lot), I didn't have
the level and anyway I hated waking up in the middle of the night.
But why do mothers give birth at night?
I wanted a job where
you don't spend your time indoors. I thought of surveyor. And also to
the natural sciences.
So the summer after
the Terminale I signed up for distance learning to get up to speed in
order to do SPCN (Natural Sciences, Physics, Chemistry). But while I
was cycling around Auvergne, in a campsite a science teacher told me
"there are no positions at the Capes, the oil search is
over...). So I did "economics", I liked the history class
on the 1929 crisis.
1964
Limoges
First year of faculty. At the time,
economics had not become independent of the law. For 4 years, I did
constitutional, civil, commercial, administrative and international
law.
I just reread my math class notes. The
first concerns sets, application to binary logic.
For the second year I went to Poitiers
on Rabelais' land. I left Turgot's intendancy, the Place du
Présidial, for the U Rabelais estate, then the U Descartes estate!
Before, with a scholarship from the Department of Haute-Vienne, I
hitchhiked around Europe, testing my cooking Latin in Italy, my
German in Germany and Switzerland, and my English if necessary. In
Venice I slept over the university computer.
1965
Poitiers
I was going to be able to feast on
the standing stone!
"Gargantua devoted himself to
the study of good letters and athletic exercises" [taking care,
however, not to frequent] "certain colleges of pouilleux where
the king could have set fire to them and burned both principal and
regens" (Rabelais)
The license was in 4 years.
We had a very theoretical training. I
could have applied for the position of Minister of the Economy and
Finance! But I doubted that our ministers would make the Samuelson
oscillator,
Nowadays, they practice like all the
different models of the "cob web", whether it is Walresian
or Marshallian, it's obvious! What interested me the most was the OR,
Operational Research. I learned more about computer science
(algorithms) than in the micro computer science course in the lecture
hall. An engineer from INSEE came to talk to us about the dimensions
of the punched card, the size of the holes, the weight of the card!
Every summer I spent
a month at the Centre d'Etudes Economiques du Limousin, directed by
Professor Guy Chambon. It was on this occasion that I discovered the
Olivetti Programma 120. But we hadn't received it yet.
I am elected
Commander of the Order of the Venerable Bitard (LST)
May 68
President of the
Cercud. Pronounce correctly!
"Z caused a
good deal of confusion on the pronunciation stakes. The English and
even Scots and some French call it Zed. The Americans call it Zee and
get confused when we correct them Zed. But Ib had his own distinctive
pronunciation: Zet. (Bill Roscoe, In Memoriam ib Sorensen);
Z we'll talk about
it again. Z is the cause of this boomer CV!
Cercle des résidents
de la cité U Descartes, I had set up a photo lab, a discotheque (no,
not a nightclub!) and a library. The Maoists brought their beautiful
icy magazines from China. When I later learned that many journalists
from France-Culture, France-Inter had just graduated from Normal Sup
(not the one called ENSET!) and that they had been Maoists, I was not
surprised by some of the front pages of Le Monde, including the one
about the Khmer Rouge.
Le « mémoire »
and the IAE
It was time for me
to become independent. I did "a dissertation" i.e. a DES,
also called "a diploma" (a Diploma of Higher Studies).
There were a few classes, of teachers from Paris because after 68,
the teachers of Poitiers had been pumped by Paris (Dauphine
University, etc.). I chose "Deficit and fare options in the
railway". I didn't have any supervisors. No proofreader. Why
this subject? because behind my parents' house the train passed,
Limoges-Brive line via Saint-Yrieix. And that for many years the
question of its maintenance has been raised. It fed a large fuel
depot (it was still the time when they were avoided at the borders).
In addition, I was interested in the relations between public and
private, and the increasing returns (those of the book are amazing).
Finally, my grandmother from Excideuil sent me her wishes on cards
representing trains, produced by "La vie du rail".
There was in several
journals and thesis a so-called extract from an article by Boiteux. I
had repeated my third year, but I found that the very elementary
maths of the article were very surprising. I wrote to Marcel Boiteux.
He replied! he was then director or president of EDF and president of
the International Society of Econometrics. A big envelope. He told me
that I was the first to have reported this typo. In the magazines,
his article (which, if my memory serves me correctly, had appeared in
La Rouge et la noire, the journal of the Polytechnicians) had been
modified, then this error repeated. I also wrote to Maurice Allais.
And I received another big envelope. I had a good bibliography at the
time.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9rit%C3%A9_des_prix
In 1969, neither
Gérard Debreu nor Maurice Allais had yet won the "Nobel Prize"
in economics.
I always wanted to
go and see for myself. I knew that our guy from Thiviers, Jean-Paul
Sartre, had bad glasses when he went to the USSR.
Georges Pompidou, from Montboudif, a
place I knew well, said that he wanted socialism in the Swedish style
but with the sun. So I took advantage of a Knowledge of Sweden course
organized by Stockholm University. It was after the brief. I was able
to meet with the Minister of Transport. I went to the USA to live
with 4 families for a month. I set foot on the soil of the USA when
man landed on the moon. I returned to the campus of the University of
Louisville, a twin city with Montpellier, and worked in a bank. I
also went to cross the Iron Curtain between Vienna and Brastislava,
in a 4L. Then in the USSR. Why do the Institute of Business
Administration? Because I hadn't studied economics, which I learned
there. I thought I had a better chance of getting a job in a company
than as Minister of the Economy.
For two years I was
an "instructor" (moniteur), the first pay of the Ministry
of National Education. And this allowed me to read the announcement
of a training course for teachers in "analysis-programming"
for the computer science departments of the IUTs. In 1970, there was
still compulsory military service. I obtained an "army-youth
internship" at the CEL, Centre d'Essais des Landes in
Biscarosse. I hadn't seen the Apollo rocket leave, but I did see a
missile fired towards the Azores. I was in the "management
information technology" department. At the National Assembly, a
deputy had asked Michel Debré, then Minister of Defense, the cost of
testing the Pluton missile. The Pluto missile was a short-range
nuclear ballistic system launched from a missile ramp mounted on an
AMX-30 tracked chassis.
This equipment was
the French army's tactical nuclear deterrent during the Cold War. At
CEL, a cost monitoring system had been set up. And I discovered
inconsistent "data." Thus the cost of painting a Panhard
AML 60 done at the CEL could vary from 1 to 5, with the same cost
elements! What for? During the first painting, the painter took a can
of paint out of stock. At the end of his work, he didn't throw away
the rest of the painting. It did not "sink". He built up a
"wild stock" of paint. When painting the next AML 60, he
used some of the rest. He wasn't going to assign the paint bucket ID
to different jobs multiple times, but some did. It had not been
planned to convert the pot into liters of paint! Always a matter of
flows and stocks. And the definition of objects.
I remembered this
when, with the Merise method in France, we spoke of an "individual
model". I discovered many wild stocks. The staff who were
supposed to enter the work orders knew that the system was producing
inconsistent results. And waited, while knitting, for the arrival of
the next great chef who would certainly launch a new information
system. And would leave before we saw the effects
1970
IUT de Montpellier
I don't know if there has been in
history a lot of teacher training for an IUT specialty not taught in
universities. My friend Marc Guyomard, who studied computer science
in Rennes – at the time there were few universities where there
were – told me that when he was recruited, he was asked if he had
done any "analysis". He said yes. He had done "numerical
analysis"! The ministry has created two training courses. One in
Montpellier, for mathematicians, economists, physicists, etc.,
directed by Robert Reix, a Limousin. One in Toulouse for computer
scientists, directed by Jacques Luguet, a Toulouse native, who in
1975 passed his thesis on S.C.A.P.F.A.C.E.: System for the automatic
and progressive design of a database management system based on the
conversational analysis of output states.
R. Reix's teaching has been the subject
of two books published by Dunod, the first at the end of our
training. When math students had economics classes, economists had
math classes. But not "maths for computer science" courses
that I will discover in the same collection as R. Reix's books with
the books of J. Bottiaux from the IUT of Grenoble. For logic, my
first books were those of François Chenique, Elements of Classical
Logic and Understanding Modern Logic.
We had courses on the logic of circuits
(the two volumes of Petitclerc, courses in machine language, 360
assembler (few hours). The "system" (operation) course was
a sleepy video from IBM on the 360 OS. For Cobol, each course dealt
with one or two instructions. We didn't have any courses in
algorithmics, no programming methods. When we went with our pack of
punched cards to the Faculty of Science, we didn't expect to see such
a long list of people come out. It was not the expected release!
Those who wanted to could teach to the
students of "Special Year" (Post Undergraduate Year). In
Montpellier, many were pharmacy students. I remember giving a course
on Simplex.
How did I end up in Nantes?
I didn't know yet that Nantes was the
centre of the world according to Samuel Whittemore Boggs.
https://lefenetrou.blogspot.com/2025/03/albrecht-penck-nantes-au-centre-du.html
Grab a Michelin map
of France. Draw a straight line from Montpellier to
Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche. It passes through Limoges, Poitiers and
Nantes! I had an offer of a position in Limoges by Guy Chambon, but I
chose Nantes. Brittany is the Limousin and the Périgord Vert but
also with the sea and the Breton dynamism.
1971 and
subsequent years
I went on an internship at ICL in Nantes, to learn and practice the
Cantor method
Assistant
Delegate
In September, I started my teaching in
the computer science department of the IUT, housed by the ENSM (Ecole
Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique), which became ECN (Ecole
Centrale de Nantes). I was a "delegated assistant".
Psychology, linguistics, logic,
history of science
I did a degree in psychology.
Fortunately, there was not only psychoanalysis! Part of the teaching
took place at the Faculty of Science, psychophysiology with practical
work, and a course in physical ergonomics. We need it nowadays when
we are offered screens with light blue writing on a grey background!
I hadn't had any
language lessons. So with a colleague I did the certificate in
general linguistics at university. For logic, I took Jean-Louis
Gardies' course. And did the certificate in the history of science.
Having done a thesis in "Computer Science of Organizations"
at Dauphine (another unsupervised work!), I applied via two sections
of the CNU (I don't know if that was the name at the time), one of
"management", one of "computer science". I was
thrown out. And received two reviews. One "your file is more IT
than management" and the other "your file is more
management than IT". I went on an internship at ICL in Nantes,
to learn and practice the Cantor method Assistant delegate.
In those years, I
did a lot of computer training for the staff of the Nantes
administrations, in companies (based on the work of people in
training, learning a lot in the services, doing analyses). I went to
CEPIA on the land of IRIA (now INRIA) at the Domaine de Voluceau in
Rocquencourt for one week in spring and one week in autumn.
Certified Teacher
I went from
Posterior to Secondary!
As the day before
the holidays I was asked to go and do a training course in a company
(status of assistant delegate!), one day I went to take a CAPET
(Certificate of Aptitude for Technical Education). I never received
the results of the competition. And the day before I was going to
Japan, I passed by rue de Grenelle. I had never seen our Ministry of
National Education. To the right of the large porch, on the wall, a
notice board covered with a chicken coop fence. And I see the results
of the competition, very fading. And it seems to me that I read my
name on it. I went to the right department. And I was asked where the
training center should be put (I don't remember the name of this
center). Of course I chose Nantes. I was thanked for my cooperation.
At the beginning of
the school year, the director of the IUT wrote to the rector. He
needed me. So I kept my service at the IUT and I passed an inspection
during a class in high school. I remember. I dared to explain the
reason for Wilson's model formula. The inspector accused me of not
respecting the program. Fortunately, in the IUT, we did not have an
inspection. Let's go back to Japan. On a beach on an island opposite
Hiroshima where I was camping, I met a Japanese computer scientist.
He was familiar with J.D. Warnier's LCP and LCS methods. very proud
to show myself by drawing on the sand, a small specification
according to the LCS notation.
Then I went back to the Posterior
Assistant Professor
(maître-assistant)
The following year I was a "senior
lecturer" in management in the management department. I was
frowned upon. 80% of the hours planned in the PPN (National
Pedagogical Program) for computer science were distributed among the
teachers, there were plenty of "leaders, group, subject, year,
internships,.... The director of the town hall's IT department was
giving a few hours of lessons there. I took his place, but he opened
up the IT services of all the town halls in France. And the
symposiums of municipal computer scientists and the executive school
of the CFPC (Centre de Formation des Personnels Municipaux. I set up
programming tutorials. We had PCs with tape cassette players. Then
floppy-disks. I was teaching structured programming. The students had
the Basic translation of "if then otherwise", "repeat
until", "as long as to do", "do until".
I worked on an economics thesis on
pricing between public companies, private companies, and public
administration. Following my internship at the CEL and my DES thesis.
But I couldn't find any thesis supervisor. I remember writing to
Jacques Chirac, the Prime Minister, to have access to a report from
the Court of Auditors. I still haven't received his reply!
One day I "went
up" to Paris (we often went up there) and went to see the
Minister of Economy and Finance, Giscard d'Estaing. Easy to find! You
go from the street to the courtyard of the Louvre under a large
porch. You go up the stairs that lead to the porch. Giscard was
invited to lunch by French people, he could well receive me. Bad
luck, the bailiff told me that he wasn't there. It was easier in
Sweden where the minister paid for his ticket for the ministry's
canteen.
Lecturer (maître
de conférences)
Then I received a
letter telling me that I was in the Computer Science section. I
became a "lecturer" in computer science and then a
"lecturer".
University
Professor
One day I passed an
HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) and I got a position as
a "University Professor". No difficulties. At the time,
there were very few candidates in the field of software engineering
and methods.
2002
Abelard at the
dawn of universities
Yves Tanguy, whom I
had known when I arrived at the IUT in Computer Science, had become
president of the University of Nantes. He called me one day to ask me
to organize a conference on Pierre Abélard. He had read my blog. I
was quoting Abelard. Normal, when I arrived in Nantes I went to Le
Pallet, Abelard's homeland and then to Liré to Du Bellay. I had read
Umberto Eco, I had all the records of Brassens. Y. Tanguy showed me
the letters received from "specialists" in Nantes. They
were not happy!
I have filled my
library with books by philosophers, ancient logicians, historians,
musicologists... and organized an international conference according
to the procedures known in science, reading committee, call for
papers. And with a set of "general public" conferences.
With my weak memory I was very stressed. Especially when I had to do
a TV show. I went around the places where Abelard and Heloise had
lived.
I then wrote
articles on specifications, the quarrel of universals... but I was
thrown out when I wanted to publish them. I "pissed in a violin"
a lot. Currently on this point I am rereading Plato's Phaedrus.
Self-taught, but
urban cyclist
In computer science,
I am self-taught. I very much regretted not having done a degree in
computer science. And to have studied compilers. But it only existed
in a few universities in France. The center was at... the east,
Grenoble.( From Big Data to AI: 60 years of experience in data,
information and knowledge processing in Grenoble, Michel Adiba,
Jean-Pierre Giraudin, UGA édition, 2024), then Nancy.
I would like to
thank all the Turing Prize winners who have written very educational
books within my reach, those who have given presentations at Inria,
presentations that were immediately transformed into teaching, all
these authors, practitioners who published, the computer scientists
with whom I have taught and done projects. And those who opened the
doors of their company's machine room to us during the night (there
was no "study machine" at the time).
I was secretary of
the CILO (Club Informatique Loire Océan) and organized conferences
every Thursday at the IUT by bringing in speakers on current themes.
I am thinking of the President of the CNIL, and Serge Abiteboul (now
at the Academy of Sciences), and many others. I went several times to
give courses at the software engineering exhibition days organized in
Toulouse by Jean-Claude Rault. And I took over in Nantes by creating
the series "Putting into practice methods and tools for
information system design".
Michael Jackson,
whose writings I really appreciated, the JSD method (so far from
Merise!) came twice. The first time I received a lot of calls from
parents for their children! The second time, he agreed to give a
course to the students. He started in French, I asked him to continue
in English. I always remember their remark: "with English you
have to pay attention to what you say". I had succeeded.
Students continued their studies in England.
Jean-Raymond Abrial
whose "Data Semantics" I had read... which had led me to go
and see on the spot in Cargèse in Corsica, sent me his first
writings on what was not yet called B. Students from the Cnam worked
on these documents. Abrial came in 1994 to give a course on B,
recorded on VHS cassettes that the IUT distributed to schools in
France, Europe and as far away as Stanford.
One day, a British
colleague who was looking for French institutions to exchange with
the University of Teessside and the University of York, came to
Nantes... attracted by Z, whom he called "his lingua franca".
With Erasmus projects (in those days the IUTs were entitled to
them!), I was able to introduce the work of Tony Hoare, Robin Milner,
which "fitted" well with Mr. Jackson's writings. After VDM,
Z suited me well because I had written my first book at Eyrolles "The
binary relational model, AI, NIAM", a method practiced at the
Crédit Mutuel Loire Ocean Computer Center
I organized a series of conferences entitled "Putting into practice methods and tools for information system design".
And created a software engineering diploma, economics, law, standards following requests for business executives.
I created the first
international conference on B. After the one on Z to B. Since then,
it has always taken place. The next one will be in Dusseldorf. And
the conference, The B method, from research to teaching.
1-10-2008
Retirement as
"professor emeritus"
Master 2 in the
history of science at the François Viète Centre
of the Faculty of
Science of Nantes. Easy! in front of the computer lab. I then wanted
to do a thesis on the history and epistemology of software
development methods, but I couldn't find a supervisor
2011 Year of
Vialatte
I am a Member of
the Club of Vialattians notoriously unknown
2025 I got
caught...
This year, we will
deal with the history of Jean-Raymond Abrial's work.
From the LTR
language (used at the Arsenal d'Indret - it reminds me of the
contract with the Arsenal during which I spent a week at the Abbey of
Fontevraud, it's not on the Richard the Lionheart road!), to the ADA
language, to the Socrate DBMS (also used in Indret), Z, B, Event-B
I refer you to the
introduction of this blog post. Blogs! it's old-fashioned! too long
to read. I had found the right title of my blog: Let's hope that no
one will say "quoras will you have 'chabat de platussar?"
when will you have finished blablaware? "When will you stop
quacking?" What has always been underlying my publications?
I copy this for you:
« ...we find that our
customers are not very good at deciding on their requirements. ...
Traditionally, we software developers have thought of our customers
as bears of very little brain. ’ They don’t know what they want’,
we said to each other smugly. But in truth we achieved this superior
perspective only by virtue of our own limitations and failures. We
were the bears of very little brain” Michaël Jackson 1995
« ...we
find that our customers are not very good at deciding on their
requirements. ... Traditionally, we software developers have thought
of our customers as bears of very little brain. ’ They don’t know
what they want’, we said to each other smugly. But in truth we
achieved this superior perspective only by virtue of our own
limitations and failures. We were the bears of very little brain”
[Jac95]
Considering
that it is the rôle of the software developers to ask the right
questions to the customer as it is a doctor to ask the right
questions to their patient. Considering that, if the “The
programmer’s task
is ... to give a formai proof that the program he proposes meets the
equally formal
functional
specification.” [Dijkstra 89], “This is a noble goal, but it
presupposes that someone else has done all the hard work by managing
to create a formai functional specification that is appropriate to
the task at hand.”, we proposed to the international software
community that they answer :
“What
questions are prompted by ones particular method of specification
?”
for
a small case study about invoicing. Primarily, the workshop will be
the event where these questions are presented. However, it will also
provide an opportunity to :- present
the
specification of
the ‘invoicing function’ through different methods, formalisms,
languages- compare different methods, formalisms, languages over the
same case study
This
workshop is the 9th meeting of the series “Putting Into Practice
Methods and Tools for Information System Design”.
The
conference will
start with an invited presentation
about
the industrial application of two methods with two different
paradigms, B and LDS/SD
Introduction
Henri HabriasIRIN,
Université de Nantes
In
[Win88], Jeanette M. Wing studied 12 specifications
of
the Library Problem, spécifications that were published in different
papers, each one illustrating a method. Ten years after, we proposed
to colleagues to specify another problem, the Invoicing Problem, but
following a common protocol.
The
name of the exercise was :“What
questions are prompted by ones particular method of specification
?”
For
several persons our call for paper was disconcerting. The academic
person
likes to be in his domain. Was this workshop for System Engineering
specialists. Requirement Engineering specialists, for the Formal
Specification
specialists,
for the Object Orientation specialist, etc. ? Very often, formal
methods
people (more exactly, working on formal
notations)
consider that they dispose an unambiguous requirements text.
Semi-formal methods people. more ambitions (very often the less you
are formal
the
more you are ambitions, what can be expressed saying “the more it
is hollow, the more you can put in it”) don’t hesitate to cover
ail steps going from the informal
to
the formal
(being
the executable
code
for them). Some consider that even the non formal
methods
are not adequate
to
obtain good requirement i.e. a sufficient requirement for the
semi-formal or formal
method
specialist (what is exactly sufficient requirement ? is it the same
thing for ail the methods specialists ?...).We consider that it is
the specifiers
responsibility
(finally is it not what we want?) to write the specification.
To
write the specification
is
not an algorithmic job, it is not an automatic transformation (and,
by definition, it will never be). In medicine, several centuries were
needed to invent what is named “clinic”. Clinicians are doctors
in medicine. They do not consider that they do not need the medical
science. Meanwhile they know that it is with their science that they
can make observations, find questions to ask, make and verify
hypothesis, make deductions, etc. After the reception of the first
proposals, we were surprised - yet, not so much ! - by the fact that
very few questions were asked in the papers. Sometimes we found some
sentences as “We suppose that ...”. As Jules Renard, a French
writer, said “writing is a way of speaking without being
interrupted”. Computer scientists manifestly do not like neither
consider what the client want and raise up questions, nor to propose
choices. Some other remarks could be done on the first versions of
the papers :- some authors create bad interpretations
(they
rewrite the text into a more ambiguous one) in order to say : with my
method, I found that I misinterpreted the informal
text.-
very few authors answered the question : “What questions are
prompted by ones particular method of specification?”- several
authors discussed in fact with technical problems linked to their
formalism. They asked themselves questions dealt with how to say
something using their formalism and not what to ask the customer on
what he has in mind. Thought it was here the first aim of the
exercise. In consequence
we
precised our aims with the following text :“It
is not up to the computer scientist to decide
what
the invoicing function is. It is not up to a doctor to decide
the
illness of their patient. It it was so, the customer would not need
to consult a doctor ! The doctor must ask the right questions of his
customer. It is the same thing for an architect, etc. ”
Aims of the papers :- The
principal goal of this exercise is to know what questions are raised
by your favorite method(s) (it is in the title of the workshop!)
-
questions on the informal
text
You ask questions (you write these questions in the paper) when the
question arrives (show connection with your method or formalism).You
choose one answer and you specify ... and you continue by asking
other questions, etc ..
.- questions on your method
-
The second goal is to present
your
method, formalism through a small example (every used concept has to
be given an example in the cases study). One should not first give a
copy of text we can find on the method in other papers and then give
the specification
following
the method/formalism. It is important to do the two things together.
NB.
:
you can consider the beauty (perhaps synonymous of facility) of your
specification.
But,
please, remember that our principal goal is to know what invoicing
function the customer has in his head, and perhaps to explain to the
customer when they are being inconsistent
.-
The set of ail the papers will serve to help to compare the
methods/formalisms, particularly from the point of view of what is
covered by the method. In other terms, we want to know of you “have
you the capacity to obtain information from the user” ? We would
like as a product of your work to have a new text in natural language
expressing your specification (taking into account your questions,
answers and consistency checks) at the end of your paper. The Library
Problem as studied by J.M. Wing was written in a “database”
orientation. Its structure was the following : a list of
transactions, a relation indicating who can execute what transaction,
and a list of constraints on the state of the database. 10 years
after the paper of J.M. Wing, we propose to study a very short
informal
text
on invoicing. It is well known that many people think they know what
invoicing is, everyone being accustomed to pay invoices. One would
think that the specifier would ask different questions than the
layperson, and not restrict themselves to a superficial understanding
of invoicing. Whether the authors, thanks to their method, language
or formalism would bring an added value to the informal
text
of the specification
was
one of our question. Our hypothesis were :
that working with different
paradigms (we tried to obtain papers from people of the “real time
community”, of the “reactive languages”, of the “protocol
community”) the specifiers would ask different sets of questions
that specifiers treat only
what they know how to specify, applying the principle enonced by the
French poet Cocteau “As these problems overcome us, we feign not to
know of them”
that the “solutions” of
case studies written following a method, are very often written after
having been obtained without the method,
that, very often, the tools
used are not appropriate, being a power hammer to kill a fly
that the tools are often not
used where they could be useful
that
the specifiers make classifications of application domains without
clear criteria, considering that such and such method is specific
to
a class of application domain. Name of domains such as “information
Systems”, “database”, “business”, etc. are in fact names
for domains of competence.
(Some
contacted people answered : it is a business application, it is not
our domain). Some years ago, “information Systems” people (term
used for database !) said that the M. Jackson’s JSD method was not
for business applications because it uses the paradigm of sequential
process and refers explicitly to T. Hoare’s CSP. It was curious
that meanwhile some people refereed the JSD’s book Jac83] saying
that JSD was data oriented (in fact they were confusing the JSD’s
trees and the JSP’s trees). More curious was the fact that M.
Jackson was treating in his book examples as invoicing, lift control,
a lift control being not classified usually in the "information
System” domain.
Perhaps
the difference between
a practitian (an engineer) and an academic is
that the latter is always able to adapt his perception of the reality
to be able to sell his theory, whereas the first has to respect the
reality even if we cand always say that “there is no reality, there
are only perceptions of reality”.
Facing
the difficulty to make our aims understood, we asked ourselves : are
we the only one interested by such questions ? We
are not indeed. Some authors have wrote on the subject. We will,
under the title “Refutability”, quote some of them as an
introduction to the workshop.
Refutability
“Respectable
software development depends
on
refutability (-..). A domain description of the system’s
environment, or application domain, claims to describe how things are
; a specification
or
requirement claims to describe how
things are when
the System is installed and operating. Both of them must be
refutable. The domain description must run the risk that someone will
say : ’That’s not true - here’s a counterexample’. And the
requirement description must run two risks : that your customer will
say : ’No, that’s not the effect I require’ ; or, later : ’Yes,
that was the effect I required, but the System isn’t achieving it -
just look at what it did here”’.[Jac95] “System design is often
described as a problem-solving activity. The engineer has a goal,
defined by the required System behavior.
He
must discover a way of achieving it and convince others that this way
will work.”
The
model (...) is no more a theory about the CBM Company’s
requirements [Coh92]. In constructing it, we hâve interpreted the
natural language statement of functionality (...). We have had
to make decisions about both functionality and structure where these
two documents were silent. Theses decisions are not necessarily
either correct or complete. But
there is no way to evaluate them without referring back to the
“owners” of the problem, the executives of the CBM Company
themselves. Of course, they may not be able to assess the validity of
our model by reading it themselves (although there are historical
precedents for teaching clients just enough mathematics to allow them
to do so). Our only recourse in such circumstances is to present
some of the more ”
surprising” properties of our model to the clients so that they may
have the opportunity to
“réfuté” them. This is an exercise in "scientific method”,
as laid down by Sir Karl Popper, who showed that actively seeking
such refutation was the
only way to gain a high degree of confidence in a scientific theory,
but that even that could not prove that it was true. How, then, are
we to identify, and conduct, appropriate réfutation experiments? One
way is merely to recount the assumptions we have made
(...). Alternatively, we might treat the model as a “prototype”
and allow the customer to “exercise” it by performing a series of
transactions and observing their effects. (...)
A
further alternative would be to prove some theorems about the model’s
behavior and to
interpret these into natural language for the client’s inspection
and approval. We would aim to select theorems which said as much as
possible about those aspects of the Systems behavior which
the original specification said
least about. (…)
Considering
that it is the rôle of the software developers to ask the right
questions to the customer as it is a doctor to ask the right
questions to their patient. Considering that, if the “The
programmer’s task
is ... to give a formal proof that the program he proposes meets the
equally formal
functional
specification.” [Dij89], “This is a noble goal, but it
presupposes that someone else has done all the hard work by managing
to create a formal functional specification that is appropriate to
the task at hand.”, we proposed to the international software
community that they answer :
“What
questions are prompted by ones particular method of specification
?”
for
a small case study about invoicing. Primarily, the workshop will be
the event where these questions are presented. However, it will also
provide an opportunity to :- present
the
specification of
the ‘invoicing function’ through different methods, formalisms,
languages- compare different methods, formalisms, languages over the
same case study
This
workshop is the 9th meeting of the series “Putting Into Practice
Methods and Tools for Information System Design”.
The
conference will
start with an invited presentation
about
the industrial application of two methods with two different
paradigms, B and LDS/SD "
without
the bibliography, which is available upon request.
Bibliography,
History of my teachings
I
have also just written my bibliography. I provide to the person or
people who have difficulty falling asleep. As well as the history of
my teachings, around and around.
Articles
