David Parnas
David Lorge Parnas ( born February 10, 1941 in Plattsburgh, New York) is a pioneer of software engineering. He developed the modular concept, which is an essential foundation of today's object-oriented programming languages with its secret principle. Parnas received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, where he also worked as a professor. He also taught at the University of North Carolina, at the Technical University of Darmstadt, at the University of Victoria and at the University of Limerick in Ireland. He now lives as a Canadian citizen in Ottawa.
He also committed against the U.S. SDI program.
SDI program
On June 5, 1985, David Parnas in the SDIO Committee (Strategic Defense Initiative Organization) called, but resigned from the committee already on 28 June back. In an open letter he stated that he would support military research in principle. The SDI program, he felt that these useless.
He argued as follows:
- Computer technology was not able to fulfill the tasks of the SDI program, according to Parnas. Particularly problematic was that the system had to detect incoming missiles, whose exact properties were not known, and the impossibility of adequate testing of the system.
- The SDIO was loud Parnas not suitable to the research fund meaningful and manage.
In fact, the SDI program is today regarded as failed.
Awards
- ACM Best Paper Award 1979
- Most Influential Paper Award, International Conference on Software Engineering
- ACM SIGSOFT 's Outstanding Research Award 1998
- GI Fellow, since September 2008