Harlan Mills

Harlan D. Mills ( born May 14, 1919 in Liberty Center, Iowa; † January 8, 1996 ) was an American computer scientist, known for his contributions to software engineering and structured programming.

Mills was a bomber pilot and flight instructor during World War II and in 1952 received his doctorate at Iowa State University in mathematics. He taught at various universities (such as Iowa State, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, Princeton University and New York University ) and was from 1964 to 1987 at IBM, where he In 1973 and Head of the status of an IBM Fellow of software Engineering and a member of the IBM Corporate Technical Committee was. Most recently, he was director and founder of the Information Systems Institute in Vero Beach and professor at the Florida Institute of Technology.

He founded the Cleanroom Software Engineering methodology at IBM, using formal principles from theoretical computer science ( Edsger W. Dijkstra, Structured Programming by others), a top -down access and with statistical quality control when testing the software. His methods led at IBM and elsewhere to substantial progress in the software quality and the development of reliable software in critical areas ( such as in aircraft or nuclear power plants ).

In 1994 he received the Computer Pioneer Award.

Writings

  • With Richard C. Linger & Bernard Witt: Structured programming, theory and practice. Addison-Wesley, 1979
  • With Richard C. Linger & Alan R. Hevner: Principles of information systems analysis and design. Academic Press, 1986
  • With others: Principles of computer programming: a mathematical approach. Allyn and Bacon, 1987
  • Software Productivity. Little Brown / Dorset House, 1988
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