Another view of software (panel session)

Before we can assess the roles and values of AI and the tools of logic in the domain of software we must be sure that we appreciate the nature of this domain. Unfortunately there is a great deal of truth to the statement “software is to the computer as life is to the planet”. Thus we know that there are many kinds of software created in many kinds of ways and serving myriad purposes. We can appreciate some of the key issues of life by examining the human being but not, in a completely satisfactory way, by examining his tools. his tools. To understand software we must go beyond the techniques and methodologies we have so carefully and painfully crafted, e.g., high level languages, structured programming, data structures and types, semaphores, functional programming, etc. Adding a few more tools will not change things very much and will probably not tell us much about why software is the way it is.