
The Parnas Era in SE

At the start of his talk, David Parnas related a short science fiction story. A time-traveler brought Shakespeare back to modern times where the Bard chose to enter college. Shakespeare took a course on, of all things, Shakespearian literature. He failed. Shakespeare was shocked at how much people had read into his work!  Of course, no one in Tuesday’s David L. Parnas Symposium believed that for a moment. As Jon Bently said, “Thanks for the ideas, the engineering and the beauty.”
Not everyone agrees with all of his ideas, but most would agree that they are important and have had a lasting impact on our discipline. The symposium was filled with talks exploring that impact. Jon Bently discussed the classic KWIC problem and the ideas of modularization and information hiding. Paul Clements and Stuart Faulk showed how the concept of program families has come into vogue as product line architectures, and is now showing payoffs for companies like Hewlett Packard and Motorola. Joanne Atlee described Parnas tables with some of their successes, and Jim Waldo talked on abstract interfaces.
Parnas himself isn’t resting on his laurels. He offered up new ideas in his own talk, and participated vigorously in a panel on software engineering education.
David Parnas received a standing ovation from all of the ICSE participants as he went up to receive a symbol of recognition Tuesday evening, and that in itself says volumes about the man and his work.

Garry Froehlich
