N040100
nfoWare
nfoNote
Bootstrapping
Confirmable Experience
Initial Material
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N040100
nfoWare
nfoNote |
0.10 2023-11-26 13:41 -0800 |
- Latest version: The latest version of this nfoNote is available on the Internet at
<http://nfoWare.com/notes/2004/01/N040100b.htm>.- This version: 0.10 <http://nfoWare.com/notes/2004/01/N040100c.htm>. Consult that page for the latest status and for the most-recent electronic copies of the material.
I intend that everything that goes into nfoWare be confirmable. There is nothing that is proposed, asserted, implemented, or demonstrated that cannot be verified and confirmed by the reader. There is no software or experiment that can't be replicated. There is no operation that can't be confirmed and any discrepancy or dissonance resolved. There is no offered model of system behavior that can't be tested and confirmed. The system is explainable by accounts that are confirmable. This is part of a view that I have for software and computers as instruments of human endeavor.
It is appropriate that nfoWare -- the site, the eBooks, the tools, procedures, and software -- provide confirmable experience. This includes establishment of a quality of coherence that makes it clear when breakdowns have occurred in (usage of) nfoWare.
There are immediately two difficulties before us. First, "confirmable experience" is not here given as a measurable quality with some independently-verifiable metric. Secondly, failure of the first condition notwithstanding, one requires coherent, confirmable tools as part of the deployment of nfoWare. And it is nfoWare that is to provide such utility, a capacity that is not already available. That is, we need to have accomplished nfoWare to some extent in order to have begun providing confirmable experience for it.
To develop confirmable experience where we do not already have it, the process involves finding some way to bootstrap from a not-so coherent regime into one that supports confirmable experience.
This leads to a sort of spiraling development process where layers are used to rebuild the layers beneath and also establish a higher level of coherence and confirmation. The trick will be to keep things manageable, avoid major reworking, and have a repeatable bootstrapping process that can work in other web-oriented approaches.
The payoff, when we are able to declare success in this venture, is the establishment of an approach that can be replicated. We will be able to reuse and port nfoWare confirmable-experience provisions to new/other developments that will be imbued with the same qualities. We move from bootstrapping to porting to preservation.
-- Dennis E. Hamilton
Seattle, Washington
January 7-9, 2004
Content
It is a theme for nfoWare that computing is an empirical activity that can be carried out through confirmable experiences:
Everything that is presented here is amenable to confirmation: direct demonstration, including operation of any software or computer-mediated exercise.
The construction, composition, and operation of experiments and software implementations can be fully verified and confirmed.
There is always a way to trouble-shoot an experience and determine failure points and root causes.
The reader/user/student is not subjected to inscrutable behavior and always has available the necessary resources for
We will need some examples of parts to bootstrap - one aspect is the web presence as a confirmable experience -- that is a key marker - it matters for a number of things
Discuss auditing, tracing, versioning and so on -- at least to illustrate
The challenge of interactive/spiral development that works in progressive steps
Contrast with incremental development which works by addition with preserved interfaces. There are aspects of that which can be employed.
[dh:2004-03-14 I have begun to use the term bootspiraling, and also talk about running bare-foot where there is basically only scaffolding and facade. The notes on the nfoWiki project and on developing nfoWikiText there are applicable to this situation. For now, that is providing the experience for having more to say here.]
This is a bit like requirements. What it is that we see, what our commitment is in that regard, and so on. Reuse applies to the interesting case of having materials on a CD-ROM, or in print, or on a hard drive and still be able to have an experience of nfoWare, be able to apply and develop it as well as the words that come with it and the words that are about nfoWare itself.
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