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No. theory is very much part of the creation of the bridge. It is not just for verification. If you read more carefully. What I am saying is that in software e

No. theory is very much part of the creation of the bridge. It is not just for verification. If you read more carefully. What I am saying is that in software engineering, there is no theory. It's all Design. All made up. There's also no verification of the design itself.

nuancebydefault 3y ago
> There's no verification of the design itself. I think this is mostly a philosophical statement, but it certainly has truth to it. Code reviews / rework tackle mostly the code, but not the fundamental design. However the execution of the code tackles the design as well: - If the design is wrong, the result is bad, that is detected at the execution phase. - If the design is suboptimal (hard to maintain or extend, bad cpu load, hard to reuse...), well that is usually not solved. IMO that matches your point.
- corethree 3y ago
  >I think this is mostly a philosophical statement, but it certainly has truth to it. It's fact. What theory is there to prove that the following design is the best possible design? What does "best" even mean? We can't verify formally in anyway how good a design is overall. We can verify, efficiency, we can verify speed, and we can verify correctness. But design? We can't verify that.
  - agent327 3y ago
    How do you prove that a bridge is the 'best' design? What does 'best' mean, for a bridge?
    - corethree 3y ago
      That's what a full formal theory encompasses. We need to define the term formally. It can be done for software organization. We've defined it for algorithmic complexity. Turns out it's two metrics.. speed and memory. Best means the lowest N, with primitives being algorithmic loops. What are the primitive modules used in program organization? Given 3 of the smallest possible primitive modules we can define in computing and all the ways possible to compose those three modules. What composition would be best? What is the metric that fits most well with our notion of best? There may be several metrics here. These questions are the ones that are asked when formalizing a theory derived from intuition. For the bridge it's likely balancing several metrics we already know. Safety, cost, length, etc. Once those metrics are quantified a theory exists to find the best. It's called optimization theory.
      - agent327 3y ago
        Those formulas are not reversible. You can compute load bearing capacity of a design, and you can compute cost of a design, but you cannot start with load bearing capacity and cost, run those through a formula, and get a bridge. Or even a sketch of a bridge. Design comes first, always, whether it is for real-world items or for software. The design is then validated using formal methods, and iterated until it meets the required goal. If you still want to maintain your position that you can compute a bridge, feel free to point out a source that describes the formula for bridges. Or any object that takes significant engineering, really.
        corethree 3y ago
        >Those formulas are not reversible. You can compute load bearing capacity of a design, and you can compute cost of a design, but you cannot start with load bearing capacity and cost, run those through a formula, and get a bridge. Or even a sketch of a bridge. What goes on today is largely just a bunch of templates. See the requirements and pick a template and modify it accordingly. That template can definitely be plugged into a optimization equation. ML models can be used to find the best templates if you want. It's a way to use compute to "design" things and sort of estimates the most optimal design given a set of other templates. These things can be modelled but sometimes they are not computationally tractable to find the best of the best optimal system. >Design comes first, always, whether it is for real-world items or for software. The design is then validated using formal methods, and iterated until it meets the required goal. The difference between software and real world engineering is that in software the primitives are well defined and few. You aren't dealing with thousands of variables so you don't need something like optimization theory or ML to estimate the optimum. There can very much be a theory for software that is practical because software is basically trying to simulate mathematics. It's not so complicated that it can't be done. >If you still want to maintain your position that you can compute a bridge, feel free to point out a source that describes the formula for bridges. Or any object that takes significant engineering, really. I maintain that one exists. We just don't know it and may never know it because the theory would involve billions of primitives. I maintain that one exists for software design and while we don't know it right now I think it's possible to find one. What I don't like about this question is the subtle sass of "maintaining your position to compute a bridge". It's a bit rude. Feel free to not be rude. thank you.

nuancebydefault 3y ago

> There's no verification of the design itself. I think this is mostly a philosophical statement, but it certainly has truth to it. Code reviews / rework tackle mostly the code, but not the fundamental design. However the execution of the code tackles the design as well: - If the design is wrong, the result is bad, that is detected at the execution phase. - If the design is suboptimal (hard to maintain or extend, bad cpu load, hard to reuse...), well that is usually not solved. IMO that matches your point.

corethree 3y ago
>I think this is mostly a philosophical statement, but it certainly has truth to it. It's fact. What theory is there to prove that the following design is the best possible design? What does "best" even mean? We can't verify formally in anyway how good a design is overall. We can verify, efficiency, we can verify speed, and we can verify correctness. But design? We can't verify that.
- agent327 3y ago
  How do you prove that a bridge is the 'best' design? What does 'best' mean, for a bridge?
  - corethree 3y ago
    That's what a full formal theory encompasses. We need to define the term formally. It can be done for software organization. We've defined it for algorithmic complexity. Turns out it's two metrics.. speed and memory. Best means the lowest N, with primitives being algorithmic loops. What are the primitive modules used in program organization? Given 3 of the smallest possible primitive modules we can define in computing and all the ways possible to compose those three modules. What composition would be best? What is the metric that fits most well with our notion of best? There may be several metrics here. These questions are the ones that are asked when formalizing a theory derived from intuition. For the bridge it's likely balancing several metrics we already know. Safety, cost, length, etc. Once those metrics are quantified a theory exists to find the best. It's called optimization theory.
    - agent327 3y ago
      Those formulas are not reversible. You can compute load bearing capacity of a design, and you can compute cost of a design, but you cannot start with load bearing capacity and cost, run those through a formula, and get a bridge. Or even a sketch of a bridge. Design comes first, always, whether it is for real-world items or for software. The design is then validated using formal methods, and iterated until it meets the required goal. If you still want to maintain your position that you can compute a bridge, feel free to point out a source that describes the formula for bridges. Or any object that takes significant engineering, really.
      - corethree 3y ago
        >Those formulas are not reversible. You can compute load bearing capacity of a design, and you can compute cost of a design, but you cannot start with load bearing capacity and cost, run those through a formula, and get a bridge. Or even a sketch of a bridge. What goes on today is largely just a bunch of templates. See the requirements and pick a template and modify it accordingly. That template can definitely be plugged into a optimization equation. ML models can be used to find the best templates if you want. It's a way to use compute to "design" things and sort of estimates the most optimal design given a set of other templates. These things can be modelled but sometimes they are not computationally tractable to find the best of the best optimal system. >Design comes first, always, whether it is for real-world items or for software. The design is then validated using formal methods, and iterated until it meets the required goal. The difference between software and real world engineering is that in software the primitives are well defined and few. You aren't dealing with thousands of variables so you don't need something like optimization theory or ML to estimate the optimum. There can very much be a theory for software that is practical because software is basically trying to simulate mathematics. It's not so complicated that it can't be done. >If you still want to maintain your position that you can compute a bridge, feel free to point out a source that describes the formula for bridges. Or any object that takes significant engineering, really. I maintain that one exists. We just don't know it and may never know it because the theory would involve billions of primitives. I maintain that one exists for software design and while we don't know it right now I think it's possible to find one. What I don't like about this question is the subtle sass of "maintaining your position to compute a bridge". It's a bit rude. Feel free to not be rude. thank you.