The Design of Software Engineering

http://www.danieldavis.com/thesis-ch3/

Comparison of various Software Engineering Bodies of Knowledge (click for larger image). Blue: Equivalent knowledge areas. Red: Areas of knowledge applied to parametric modelling in my research.

The programming languages architects use categorised by Appleby and VandeKopple’s (1997, xiv) taxonomy of programming paradigms.

To a computer, a parametric model reads as a set of instructions. The computer takes the inputs, applies the sequence of explicit functions, and thereby generates the parametric model’s outputs. “Anybody involved in any job that ultimately creates instructions that are executed by a computer, machine or even biological entity, can be said to be programming” argues David Rutten (2012), the developer of the popular parametric modelling interface, Grasshopper. This is not to say programming and parametric modelling are synonymous. There are clearly significant differences between designing architecture and designing software. Yet in both cases, there is a common concern with automating computation through sequences of instructions. Despite this “common ground” (Woodbury 2010, 66), and despite architects recognising that parametric modelling is often “more similar to programming than to conventional design” (Weisberg 2008, 16.12), the implications of the parallels between parametric modelling and software engineering remain largely unexplored. In particular, two pertinent questions remain unaddressed: if parametric modelling and software engineering both concern the automation of computers, do they both encounter the same challenges when doing so? And if they share the same challenges, are parts of their respective bodies of knowledge transferable in alleviating these challenges?