ESN Software Architecture and Development
This page was last updated on Thursday, October 01, 2009.
Sometimes a web site presents an article or information that is useful to the reader. Though the information is there, it can be hard to find. The problem is that a keyword or phrase search of millions of sites generally yields poor results. This site is self indexed through a service provided by Atomz. This feature, through the Search This Site link, lets users scan my site for words or phrases without the clutter that comes from a world wide or an Internet service provider search.
This site contains three volumes. The largest volume at my site is The Abused Men's Area. Domestic violence is a serious social problem that affects everyone in some way. Society and public policy often ignore the fact that women abuse men. Though false allegations of child abuse continue to be a common feature in divorce proceedings, our courts continue in ignoring this problem. False accusations of domestic violence have become a woman's weapon of choice and again the courts ignore the problem that some women are abusive and violent and do lie. So, I have devoted this volume to abused men and their family and their friends.
A smaller volume is Dusty's Area. Dusty is a grey male cat with an attitude. We first met on 14 June 1993 and he viewed me with suspicion and distrust. Some cats are cautious around those they do not know. Dusty had a reason to be distrustful. A woman had abused him and so the traits of an abusive person include the mistreatment of animals. Later that month I heard a crash, some workmen had failed to properly stack the firewood and close the door to the woodshed.
I found Dusty buried under a stack of upset firewood and I dug him out. Since then, he was a loyal pal. I liked the way Dusty approached life as a cat and I began sketching cartoons of Dusty and shared them with others. They liked them. In fact, Dusty turned out to be a real charmer and loved to play peek-a-boo around the corners in the house. Dusty died a few years ago of old age.
The third volume is My Resume. Since I have multiple medical problems, I am not able to travel. I cannot sustain the long hours of work required to specify design and test plan requirements. Nor can I then translate those requirements into tasks to be completed according to standards to ensure reliability, completeness, maintainability. This requirement is important for if something can’t be repaired or modified without spaghetti code, then it is useless.
Since I haven’t designed or programmed a software component in sixteen years, I want to present an old idea that I conceived about 36 years ago. In 1973, punched cards were still in use by major software engineering companies. The punched cards consisted of 80 columns and one character or symbol occupied a column.
Then computer programmers were required to annotate every line (card) of code. The problem was that the punched card had 80 columns but the eight leftmost columns were reserved for sequence numbers. These numbers were to be used to sort cards were not in order. As a result, each programmer was very careful about their punched cards.
This left the programmer with 72 columns for programming code and comments. However, the government decided that they wanted columns 68 through 72 to be reserved for Engineering Change Numbers and that left only 67 columns for code. Then five to eight of the first columns on a punched card were reserved for statement labels and that left 59 columns for code.
When the contract neared completion, I left Colorado Springs and returned to Vallejo and worked for several companies. I changed my coding technique to take advantage of storing source, library, and executable code on disks. Instead of commenting code line by line, I decided to annotate the code by presenting a general overview of the required code. Then I annotated the code to show the conversion of the requirements into tasks to be completed.
I earned my Associate in Arts degree from Vallejo Junior College (similar to a community college) in 1966. Then I earned my Baccalaureate in Physical Science and Mathematics from Sonoma State College (now Sonoma State University) in 1968. Both colleges used the semester system rather than the quarter system. I completed 63 semester units at Vallejo Junior College and more than 100 semester units at Sonoma State College. The total for this is 163 semester units but only 120 units were required to graduate. The strange part was that the councillors and I forgot that I had to take the course in calculus and this was an anathema without the ecclesiastical authority.
The problem was that I read Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s work on calculus and Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica and I found that Leibniz’s notation was superior to Newton’s dot notation. So I challenged the course in calculus using Leibniz’s work and notation and Newton’s work and his notation because I also had to take a course in the "History of Mathematics." But there is more to this account.
The ‘New Math’ fad of the 1950s and 1960s dictated that students had to study set theory to help them understand the principles of arithmetic and mathematics. The problem was that very few teachers knew anything about set theory and Venn diagrams. Most Venn diagrams are depicted as disjoint or overlapping circles. The problem was how to explain the difference between the union and the intersection of sets.
So the instructor displayed two colored transparent disks, one red and the other blue. Then she asked the class about what they saw. The class was puzzled and after a few nervous moments I broke the silence and said that I saw magenta and others claimed that they saw purple. We were both right because magenta and purple are determined by their intensity and their lack of saturation with white. Otherwise, that magenta would be a pastel and not fuchsin, a deep purplish red.
This site will change as I remove obsolete information, add new information, or correct errors. I do try to proofread my material for errors and another set of eyes are always welcome.
Edward S. Nunes