RedAsh's Blog

A Sunday. Sunday always seem so short to me. I have no idea why Mum. The good times really flies...

Oh yea Mum, it seems to me that I have yet to told you my plans to sign up with the SPF. I may start as a junior officer, but hell, I am using it as stepping stones towards my next step, the CPIB. But that will be 2 years later. Then after CPIB, and hopefully I had already gained my Master by then (I am still tinkering between PMI or financial). I shall opt for some position at the Bank. Hope that my CAT2A clearance will help out.

One thing that allures me is about an article I read up lately, now there is a lack of security PM. Reason? I think because of the high project failure rates, and the criticality of security, the failure of a security system means the end of your PM career... A HUGE tradeoff for maybe a small gain... or a gamble for fame... but it looks like a good prospect afterall since the money seems awesome... but am I game enough? or more precisely... can I handle it?

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Ok mum, its 11pm now. Time for 2nd part of inclusion for today's revision report. Kinda slow but I will turn on full power tomorrow, no time to waste anymore I guess.

Before going to bed, I figure I need to tidy up the CIS 314 notes, as those are what I will be going through for the next 3 days, Monday to Wednesday for CIS 314. Then Thursday for CIS 316. Then Friday for 326. And Saturday and Sunday again for CIS 314. Hope I can make a comeback on Software Engineering. I scored CIS 210 lowest for last term.

Anyway, a quick revision on CIS210. I had came to instill the 3 "Causes and Effects" for "Why the need for SE?", 5 software characteristics, and 5 internal software qualities.

The 3 "Causes and Effects" for "Why the need for SE?" is done by comparing "Programming in the Small" (PitS) with "Programming in the Large" (PitL),

First is that PitS is an personal endeavour, while PitL is an collective endeavour. Which also leads to the second, collective requires all the stakeholders involved to facilitate a proper communication system. This effect results in the need for fostering productive communication, and "resolving conflicting goals".

Last is that PitS is a one-off product as the user is usually the programmer as well. But for PitL, they are not of same entity, as such, there will be ever-changing requirements to be made. This results in the need to "plan for future evolution"

The 5 characteristics of software are intangible (no physical form HENCE no mass manufacturing process to consider) and therefore an absense of wear and tear (more usage = more reliable), configurable, custom built (implying low reuse) and lastly, malleable (which means implementing changes, yet each change usually potentially introduces new faults and failures.)

The 5 external software qualities to strive for are
1> correctness - test for the system conformance to specs
2> realiability - test for system failure rate; who is different from fault rate
3> robustness - test for system to cope with incomplete specs; means coding more than the spec requires, but this also means the returns and the resource cost tradeoffs.
4> Efficiency - looking at system performance
5> Ease of Use - user's acceptance to the system.

The 5 internal software qualities that are strive by developers are
1> Verfication and Validation - the former checks for system conformance to specs, while the latter checks for adequacy of the system to the specs.

2> Maintainability - the ease of maintainence... corrective for correctness, adaptive for realiablity and robustness, and perfective for efficiency and ease of use. Basically maintainence is to enchance current software qualities.

3> Repairability and Evolvability, the former refers to corrective maintainence, and the latter refers to adaptive and perfective maintainence. Evolvability supports mallability and vice versa; while repairability supports correctness and reliability.

4> Reusability - refers to the ability for the component to be use in another system. And it is rare in terms of software due to its custom built nature. Reuse emerge from continual maturity... it supports all other internal qualities

5> Portability and Interoperability - portable refers to able to be used in mroe than 1 hardware platform, while interoperable means the software ability to "cooperate" with other software products (of different vendors etc). This support overall efficiency and ease of use and also help recoup costs.

Thats all for now mum. Now its 12 midnight. After some more max pushups then off I go for a bath with my newly purchased "red mug" like the I use back in Yishun (before it was used as a paint tub by DAjuju)... K mum nities ! =D