Intentional Software
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
For obvious reasons, the technologies and products that create the most noise in the main stream media are the ones related to the web (Web 2.0,
Ajax), the portable music player world (iPod, iPhone), the Operating System universe (OS X, Vista), and the gaming console ecosystem (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3).
All these technologies are end user products, but there is also another category that is less interesting to consumers, though, very important to people like me (or you, if you are a software engineer/developer) that surfaces from time to time. I am talking about software engineering methodologies.
As part of my MBA studies, among many other courses, I am currently enrolled in a class called
BU655, Management of Innovation and Technology Transfer. A portion of the course's evaluation is a critique and analysis of an article about a current technological innovation.
For my assignment, I found an interesting article at Technology Review written by Scott Rosenberg, titled
"Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Meta."The article's subject is Intentional Programming, which is the invention of an ex-Microsofty and based on research work
published in 1995. The process looks very pretty; see for yourself:
I have heard of Intentional Programming in the past, but thought the framework to be too proprietary and probably not very practical at the time, i.e., it is really a radical change in the way software is engineered, and there is no public evidence that it actually works--everything is theoretical right now and in theory everything works--but that is not stopping
Charles Simonyi, its creator, to market it as a product through his company
Intentional Software.
Since this is, mostly, a software development blog I thought to post the critique online to see if someone else has any thoughts on Intentional Programming.
The opinions expressed in the following document are very subjective. My comments are based on the information I have right now, so I am thinking my views on the subject may change as I gain more experience in the field--this is a nice way to say that I do not know everything nor claim to do so, thus willing to learn about anything and from anyone.
(Note that I do not work for Intentional Software--although it looks like an interesting company to work for--nor have I ever used Intentional Programming to create any software applications. For all I know, the framework is the best thing invented after electrons.)
Critique and analysis of Rosenberg's article "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Meta." (PDF, 202 KB.)
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