From leavens@cs.uiowa.edu Mon Feb 5 00:46:47 2001 MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 00:47:17 -0600 From: "Gary T. Leavens" Reply-To: leavens@cs.uiowa.edu X-Accept-Language: en,de,fr To: Elise Anderson Subject: Re: Homework #1 & Chapter 0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Elise, Elise Anderson wrote: > You ask me for my opinion of the value of the > calculation approach for the cake example - based on > what? Do you mean my opinion based on how they > figured it out, do I think it an accurate way of > solving problems, ...(I am not sure what you are > asking). Yes, based on how Cohen figured out the problem of the cake. > On page 4 they mention legal shape. what is "legal > shape"? I think this is a rather odd way of saying "syntactically correct". > On page 5 they say "...the ability to test has nothing > to do with correctness..." - why was this said? Do > they think that programmers think this way? Cohen is trying to be thought-provoking; or perhaps he really believes this. But he's making a theoretical point. I'm sure he doesn't believe that programmers think this; on the contrary, he thinks they do believe testing can show correctness, and wants to convince them otherwise. We'll have a discussion about it on Tuesday, and we can discuss these points at length then. Gary