Douglas T. Ross
Douglas T. Ross
Douglas Taylor "Doug" Ross was an American computer scientist pioneer, and chairman of SofTech, Inc. He is most famous for originating the term CAD for computer-aided design, and is considered to be the father of Automatically Programmed Tools (APT), a programming language to drive numerical control in manufacturing. His later work focused on a pseudophilosophy he developed and named Plex.
"There is a rigorous science, just waiting to be recognized and developed, which encompasses the whole of the software problem, as defined, including the hardware, software, languages, devices, logic, data, knowledge, users, users, and effectiveness, etc. for end-users, providers, enablers, commissioners, and sponsors, alike."
"Computer-aided design also is not automatic programming, although automatic programming techniques must necessarily play an important role in computer-aided design."
"The objective of the Computer-Aided Design Project is to evolve a machine systems which will permit the human designer and the computer to work together on creative design problems."
"We never have any understanding of any subject matter except in terms of our own mental constructs of "things" and "happenings" of that subject matter."
"(SA) combines blueprint-like graphic language with the nouns and verbs of any other language to provide a hierarchic, top-down, gradual exposition of detail in the form of an SA model. The things and happenings of a subject are expressed in a data decomposition and an activity decomposition, both of which employ the same graphic building block, the SA box, to represent a part of a whole. SA arrows, representing input, output, control, and mechanism, express the relation of each part to the whole."
"The assertion that a problem unstated is a problem unsolved seem to have escaped many builders... All too often, design and implementation begins before the real needs and system functions are fully known. The results are skyrocketing costs, missed scheduled, waste and duplication, disgruntled users and endless series of patches and repairs euphemistically called "systems maintenance"
