- Software on Speculation
- Posted by RickMerrill on July 30th, 2003
As a builder builds a house without a buyer, can an
embedded software engineer "rationally" develop a former
customer's software on-speculation? - RM
- Posted by tim on July 30th, 2003
"RickMerrill" <RickMerrill@comcast.net> wrote in message news:UPWVa.21400$Ho3.3635@sccrnsc03...
in theory yes, but the problem is is how do you stop
someone copying it. If a builder builds a house on a plot
of land, that's it. If you develop something that someone
you know could use and demo it to them, unless you have
some patented material there's noting to stop him saying,
that's a great idea and developing it himself.
Tim
- Posted by Ken Lee on July 30th, 2003
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:32:36 GMT, RickMerrill
<RickMerrill@comcast.net> wrote:
Without a spec, a Software Engineer cannot "build" a product as there
would be nothing to verify it against. Actually the software engineer
could build a product but it would be totally on risk & there would be
dire possibility that rework would be needed. However a Software
Engineer can build software components that provide "feature sets".
Each feature could be unit tested and integrated with a harness that
is built from other features, for, say, performance testing. This
approach does require the skills of a domain expert to determine what
features should be developed.
When a spec does arrive, then the features can be configured to meet
the requirement. By this time the software engineer has already
determined the prospective software architecture for the system. Also,
by the time the spec arrives, it is probable that a lot of the
protocols behind unit tests would have been created. If a feature
requires optimisation, then this is view as refactoring, and the unit
tests could be readily re-run.
Ken.
+====================================+
I hate junk email. Please direct any
genuine email to: kenlee at hotpop.com
- Posted by RickMerrill on July 31st, 2003
RickMerrill wrote:
Thanks for the many responses here and via email. I am
personally interested in solving the problem, but I think
that the biggest advantage for any of us to do this is to
convey the message to potential clients, "see, I'm already
working for you!"
Rick
Merrill
