Software Engineering for Students A Programming Approach

Exercises 19
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Exercises
These exercises ask you to carry out an analysis and come to some conclusion about a situation.
Often there is no unique “right answer”. Sometimes you will have to make reasonable
assumptions or conjectures. The aim of the exercises is to clarify your understanding of the
goals of software engineering and some of the problems that lie in the path of achieving
these goals.
1.1 Write down a list of all of the different items of software that you know about, then
categorize them within types.
1.2 What are your own personal goals when you develop a piece of software? Why? Do
you need to re-examine these?
1.3 Is software expensive? What criteria did you use in arriving at your conclusion?
1.4 Is programming/software development easy? Justify your answer.
1.5 The evidence suggests that there are enormous differences between programmers in
terms of productivity. Why do you think this is? Does it matter that there are differences?
1.6 For each of the applications described in Appendix A assess the importance of the
various goals identified in this chapter. For each application, rank the goals in order.
1.7 What would you expect the relative costs of hardware and software development to
be in each of the cases above?
1.8 How do you personally feel about software maintenance? Would you enjoy doing it?
1.9 Think of an example of a program in which the aims of minimizing run time and memory
occupancy are mutually contradictory. Think of an example where these two are
in harmony.
1.10 Analyze the conflicts and consistencies between the various goals of software
engineering.
1.11 In addition to the goals described in this chapter, are there any other goals that software
engineering should strive for? What about making sure that it is fun to do it? What
about exercising creativity and individuality?