Cleanroom Software Engineering: Technology and Process

3 Cleanroom Software Specification

A fundamental change in the way computer programs were written occurred in the 1970s. Prior to that time, the absence of engineering foundations for program development, coupled with the increasing demand for large programs, had led to growing use of arbitrary control logic, with a complexity that defied human understanding. This complexity was addressed by the theory and practice of structured programming. Programs of any complexity whatsoever could be designed by nesting and sequencing just three fundamental control structures—namely, sequence (do), alternation (ifthenelse), and iteration (whiledo)—again and again in a hierarchical structure. Structured programming was an engineering process that benefited ...