Editing Software design (section)

== Code as design ==

The difficulty of using the term "design" in relation to software is that in some senses, the source code of a program ''is'' the design for the program that it produces. To the extent that this is true, "software design" refers to the design of the design.  [[Edsger W. Dijkstra]] referred to this layering of semantic levels as the "radical novelty" of computer programming,<ref>{{cite web
| url=http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html
| title=On the cruelty of really teaching computing science
| last = Dijkstra
| first = E. W.
| author-link = Edsger_Dijkstra
| year=1988
| access-date=2014-01-10
}}</ref> and [[Donald Knuth]] used his experience writing [[TeX]] to describe the futility of attempting to design a program prior to implementing it:

{{quotation |
T<sub>E</sub>X would have been a complete failure if I had merely specified it and not participated fully in its initial implementation. The process of implementation constantly led me to unanticipated questions and to new insights about how the original specifications could be improved.<ref>{{cite web
| url = http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb10-4/tb26knut.pdf
| title = Notes on the Errors of TeX
| last = Knuth
| first = Donald E.
| author-link = Donald_Knuth
| year = 1989
}}
</ref>
}}