Year: 2012

Larry Constantine – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Larry Constantine – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Structured Design

Constantine, who learned programming at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began his professional career in computers with a summer job at Scientific Computing, at the time a subsidiary of Control Data Corporation, in Minneapolis. He went on to full-time work at MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science, where he wrote routines for analyzing spark chamber photographs, and then to C-E-I-R, Inc., where he worked on economics simulations, business applications, project management tools, and programming languages.

While still an undergraduate at MIT he began work on what was to become structured design, formed his first consulting company, and taught in a postgraduate program at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. The core of structured design, including structure charts and coupling and cohesion metrics, was substantially complete by 1968, when it was presented at the National Symposium on Modular Programming. He joined the faculty of IBM’s Systems Research Institute the same year, where he taught for four years and further refined his concepts.

As part of Structured Design, Constantine developed the concepts of cohesion (the degree to which the internal contents of a module are related) and coupling (the degree to which a module depends upon other modules).[7] These two concepts have been influential in the development of software engineering, and stand alone from Structured Design as significant contributions in their own right. They have proved foundational in areas ranging from software design to software metrics, and indeed have passed into the vernacular of the discipline.

Constantine also developed methodologies that combine human-computer-interaction design with software engineering. One methodology, usage-centered design, is the topic of his 1999 book with Lucy Lockwood, “Software For Use”. This is a third significant contribution to the field, being both well used in professional practice and the subject of academic study, and taught in a number of human-computer interface courses and universities around the world. His work on Human-Computer Interaction was influential for techniques like essential use cases and usage-centered design, which are widely used for building interactive software systems.

 

Philosophy of language – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature ofmeaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language and reality. For continental philosophers, however, the philosophy of language tends to be dealt with, not as a separate topic, but as a part of logic. (See the section “Language and continental philosophy” below.)

First, philosophers of language inquire into the nature of meaning, and seek to explain what it means to “mean” something. Topics in that vein include the nature of synonymy, the origins of meaning itself, and how any meaning can ever really be known. Another project under this heading of special interest to analytic philosophers of language is the investigation into the manner in which sentences are composed into a meaningful whole out of the meaning of its parts.

Second, they would like to understand what speakers and listeners do with language in communication, and how it is used socially. Specific interests may include the topics of language learning, language creation, and speech acts.

Third, they would like to know how language relates to the minds of both the speaker and the interpreter. Of specific interest is the grounds for successful translation of words into other words.

Finally, they investigate how language and meaning relate to truth and the world. Philosophers tend to be less concerned with which sentences areactually true, and more with what kinds of meanings can be true or false. A truth-oriented philosopher of language might wonder whether or not a meaningless sentence can be true or false, or whether or not sentences can express propositions about things that do not exist, rather than the way sentences are used.

Philosophy of language – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Ludwig Wittgenstein – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The early Wittgenstein was concerned with the logical relationship between propositions and the world, and believed that by providing an account of the logic underlying this relationship he had solved all philosophical problems. The later Wittgenstein rejected many of the conclusions of the Tractatus, arguing that the meaning of words is constituted by the function they perform within any given language-game.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

General semantics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

General semantics is a program begun in the 1920s that seeks to regulate the evaluative operations performed in the human brain. After partial program launches under the trial names “human engineering” and “humanology,”[1] Polish-American originator Alfred Korzybski[2] (1879–1950) fully launched the program as “general semantics” in 1933 with the publication of Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.

General semantics is not generalized semantics. Misunderstandings traceable to the program’s name have greatly complicated the program’s history and development

General semantics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

 

Dianetics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dianetics is a set of pseudoscientific ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body that was invented by L. Ron Hubbard and is practiced by followers of Scientology. Hubbard coined Dianetics from the Greek stems dia, meaning through, and nous, meaning mind.

 

Dianetics explores the existence of a mind with three parts: the conscious “analytical mind,” the subconscious “reactive mind“, and the somatic mind.[1] The goal of Dianetics is to remove the “reactive mind”, which Scientologists believe prevents people from becoming more ethical, more aware, happier and saner. The Dianetics procedure to achieve this is called “auditing”.[2] Auditing is a process whereby a series of questions are asked by the Scientology auditor, in an attempt to rid the auditee of the painful experiences of the past which scientologists believe to be the cause of the “reactive mind”.

Dianetics grew out of Hubbard’s personal experiences and experiments and has been described as a mix of “Western technology and Oriental philosophy”.[3] Hubbard stated that Dianetics “forms a bridge between” cybernetics and General Semantics, a set of ideas about education originated by Alfred Korzybski that was receiving much attention in the science fiction world in the 1940s

Dianetics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

L. Ron Hubbard – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

After establishing a career as a writer, becoming best known for his science fiction and fantasy stories, he developed a self-help system called Dianetics which was first published in May 1950. He subsequently developed his ideas into a wide-ranging set of doctrines and rituals as part of a new religious movement that he called Scientology.

L. Ron Hubbard – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.