Underlying the hype over Hyper-Card and CD-ROM there are some pivotal truths, one of these being that well-packaged information is becoming a bigger commodity than ever before. Those software developers and information brokers who can pick up on each others' skills and resources will be able to create a new kind of product, a blend of information and code that goes well beyond what we have seen to date in stackware (better call it heapware).
How these people will create this marvelous new kind of product I do not say because I do not know. However, as an information broker, I must pass along to you software developers this valuable insight into the laws on libel.
The court that heard the appeal in the Jerry Falwell vs. Hustler magazine case ruled that Hustler magazine had not libeled Falwell because Hustler's imputation of sexual impropriety to an evangelist was implausible.
It's the Implausibility Defense, and I see a great future for it. Just make sure your claims are implausible.
But this is all just common sense. You don't need my information broker's insights.
Many truly valuable insights for software developers were being dispensed at Miller Freeman's Software Development ,88 this year.
Keynote speaker Jon Bentley outlined his three principles of programming: prototyping, profiling, and the use of little languages.
We heard more about prototyping from Dan Bricklin, who gave some reasons for prototyping---that is, to get nonprogramming experts and potential users involved in the design, to get good products done faster and to weed out bad ideas quickly, and to impress funding sources. Then, realizing he was preaching to the converted, he gave one typology of prototyping methods (algorithm prototyping, functionality prototyping, appearance prototyping) and some techniques for each type.
Several speakers addressed profiling. Chuck Duff, for one, talked about using the profiling capabilities of Actor to identity the areas of the code that are hogging the processor, so you can selectively change dynamic bindings to static for efficiency.
And William Barrett expanded on the theme of little languages, mentioning that developers working in the Macintosh or VAX VMS or PC AT environment who want the combined functions of Unix lex and yacc should write to QCAD Systems in San Jose and ask about Qparser+.
And design methodologies. Miller Freeman is big on them. Larry Constantine declared the two powerful principles at the heart of every system design approach to be: Take notes! Draw pictures! Himself a design methodologist, Constantine admitted that modeling a system that doesn't yet exist is a creative endeavor that doesn't yield to techniques that are too structured.
Edward Yourdon was there with copies of his new newsletter, American Programmer. It was full of plausible grim prognostications about Japanese and European programmers taking the software industry away from the American programmer. Contact number: 212-769-9460.
Yourdon is no more depressing than my cousin Corbett, though, who recently told me this tale of software woe.
Immediately after playing Chris Crawford's Balance of Power, Corbett decided to write his own game program. It would allow players to choose countries and replay the major wars of the twentieth century. Players could develop nuclear weapons, but if they used them, the program would crash, formatting the hard disk. But the war gaming would be only a tactic in the real strategic goal of the game: global economic dominance.
Midway through the development process, Esquire magazine pronounced the death of the Yuppie. It didn't stop Corbett, though. He's hoping that the culture of greed will hang in there long enough for him to make a buck off this product.
It might, but he has now encountered a most frustrating bug. He had gotten as far as developing a testable version of the product and had written an autoplay program to simulate various player strategies when The Bug appeared.
It seems that every time the game is played, the result is the same. The countries that lose the last major war before the atomic age are subsequently prohibited by the victors from developing nuclear arsenals. While the victors invest in nuclear weapons that they will not be able to use without destroying the system, the losers concentrate on education and usable technologies, and achieve global economic dominance in the next round. Same result every time. Boring.
Corbett sees the trap quite clearly. He just doesn't see any way out.
Michael Swaine Editor-at-Large