Extended Abstract: Getting Engaged

Abstract

How do we engage with the artefacts that we build as software engineers or computer scientists? Programs are one thing: we can execute them and see how they behave, as well as engaging with them in other ways. Other artefacts – many of which are more abstract and formal – present more of a problem. Mathematicians, who are used to dealing with rigorously presented ideas and proofs, have a social process for dealing with understanding. Arguably, however, they have just the same problem with a more formal presentation: for example, by all accounts Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica is riddled with mistakes of minor and more major significance. In the computing domain, what sort of questions do we want to ask about an artefact such as a specification or a set of tests?