An unpleasant scene from Cool Hand Luke, but also represents the sorry state of our software industry is in today.

 

Here is a pictorial example of what I am talking about which represents software design at its finest:

 

 

Even the customer could not explain what s/he needed.  Whats wrong with this picture?  Even though it is something as trivial as a swing on a tree, everyone has their own ideas as to what the words mean because we dont have a way of visualizing what the software should be.

 

Had the customer drawn the picture, rather than describing it with words, which is what we usually do in gathering software requirements, then the outcome may have been different.  In fact, that is the key.  Look at the picture again, everyone knows what the customer really needed.  So whats wrong again?

 

The current state of the art in software engineering has us describing customer virtual requirements using words.  Even worse, once we have the words then software designers (architects, programmers, whatever) use highly specialized drawings that mean nothing to anyone but the person who drew it.  We cant even share some of these drawings with our fellow programmers because even they may misinterpret the drawing depending on the dialect and that persons training for that language.

 

What the software industry needs is a way to draw software so that all of the participants can understand the picture.  What that looks like, I dont know, because it has not been invented yet.