To the Editor,

In your January/February edition's otherwise excellent coverage of Charles Simonyi and his pioneering concept of WYSIWYG (or Intentional) programming, you unfortunately included the throwaway remark about the Unified Modeling Language (UML), "But UML diagrams can't be transformed into finished software, which is Simonyi's dream for intentional programming."

This would come as quite a surprise to a large and growing community of architects and developers who have been doing just that, and for years:

  • back in the 1990's, Tellabs built a cross-connect switch composed of more than 1000 microcontrollers
    running an embedded RTOS, with development done in UML;
  • NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope is in development now by the agency and many of its
    subcontractors to orbit the Earth 940,000 miles out, with development done in UML;
  • the U.K. Ministry of Defence reports 40 man-years of coding saved in the Stingray torpedo mid-life
    software upgrade, with development done in UML;
  • Bioanalytical Systems, Inc. builds a laboratory instrument called a fraction collector (among other
    instruments) executing on embedded microcontrollers, with development done in UML;
  • the U.S. Department of Defense is using "model-based procurement" to develop its Single Integrated
    Air Picture upgrades, with development done in UML;
  • Ricoh Systems builds office automation systems, with development done in UML;
  • Varian, Inc. builds chromatography systems, with development done in UML;
  • St. Jude Medical builds implantable medical devices based on ultra-low power microcontrollers with
    development done in UML;
  • Delphi builds automotive HVAC and entertainment systems, with development done in UML.

While it is certainly true that UML, now a staple of every major software development tool worldwide, is often used only for "sketching" an architecture or design, I hope that these examples of implementing, running systems will make it obvious that a large and growing community has successfully been employing the full capabilities of UML "all the way down" to executing systems.

 

Richard Mark Soley (SB '82, SM '85, PhD '89), Object Management Group
Grady Booch, IBM
Ivar Jacobson, Jaczone
Allan Kennedy, Kennedy Carter
Stephen Mellor, Freeter
Bran Selic, IBM
Cortland Starrett, Mentor Graphics
Andrew Watson, Object Management Group

Last updated on 11/20/2007

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