skip to main content
article

On system design

Published:16 October 2006Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

In this essay, I consider some of the factors that are making it more and more difficult to expend the effort necessary to do system design. Because of changes in the economics of the field in both industry and research, we have become less able to take the time needed to do real system design, and to train the next generation of designers. Because of the intellectual property landscape, we are less able to discuss system design. The end result is that we do less good system design than we used to, at least in those environments where system design used to be most common. But there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of system design, which appears to be happening in non-traditional ways and in non-traditional venues.

References

  1. ACM Curricula Recommendations, http://www.acm.org/education/curricula.html, 2005.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. Brooks, F. P., The Mythical Man Month: Essays in Software Engineering, 20th Anniversary Edition, Addison-Wesley, Boston, MA, 1995. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  3. Brooks, F. P., The Design of Design, Turing Award Lecture, http://terra.cs.nps.navy.mil/DistanceEducation/online.siggraph.org/2001/SpecialSessions/2000TuringLecture-DesignOfDesign/session.html, 2000.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. Hoffman, Daniel M. and David M. Weiss (ed), Software Fundamentals: Collected Papers by David L. Parnas, Addison-Wesley, Boston, MA, 2001. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  5. Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1962.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  6. Lampson, Butler, Hints for Computer System Design. ACM Operating Systems Rev. 15, 5 (Oct. 1983), pp 33--48. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  7. Raymond, Eric, The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, O'Reilly Media (2001). Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  8. Ryle, Glibert The Concept of Mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1949.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. Sutherland, Ivan, Technology and Courage, Sun Microsystems Laboratories Essay Series, Mt. View, CA, 1996.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. Wing, Jeannette M., Computational Thinking, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 49, Issue 2, March, 2006. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

Index Terms

  1. On system design

        Recommendations

        Comments

        Login options

        Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

        Sign in

        Full Access

        • Published in

          cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
          ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 41, Issue 10
          Proceedings of the 2006 OOPSLA Conference
          October 2006
          480 pages
          ISSN:0362-1340
          EISSN:1558-1160
          DOI:10.1145/1167515
          Issue’s Table of Contents
          • cover image ACM Conferences
            OOPSLA '06: Proceedings of the 21st annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications
            October 2006
            514 pages
            ISBN:1595933484
            DOI:10.1145/1167473

          Copyright © 2006 ACM

          Publisher

          Association for Computing Machinery

          New York, NY, United States

          Publication History

          • Published: 16 October 2006

          Check for updates

          Qualifiers

          • article

        PDF Format

        View or Download as a PDF file.

        PDF

        eReader

        View online with eReader.

        eReader
        About Cookies On This Site

        We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

        Learn more

        Got it!