Tuesday, June 30, 2009

FEM - like analysis on code

This idea is partly from a section I remember from the "Inmates are running the Asylum". Alan Cooper compares code to a huge stack of cards one on top of the other, with just that single flick threatening to bring the whole thing crashing down.

How about treating code as a structure, and using finite element method-like analysis on it? Of course, the math would be discrete, not continuous. But the possiblities are interesting - we already create software in layers, with upper ones depending on the lower ones. Surely some definitions of structural stabilty can be got from those? Similarly the dynamic nature of programs could possibly be modeled as forces...

food for thought..but that's as far as I've got with this idea.