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resources | kinnicutt & hopper, 1992 [research interview]

Patrick Kinnicutt and Mary Hopper, Passages from Personal Interview, October 1, 1992

Passage 1
Kinnicutt: We have a project which our group calls the Engineering Geology Educator. The Physical Geology Tutor is one module of the Geology Educator. Nomad is another module. My research currently is related to this project, developing a spatial decision support system using spatial probabilistic modeling to model the subsurface. Part of one of the modules is a profiling package called Nomad, which I am developing. Nomad runs on Athena and is based on X-Windows System Version 11, C/C++ and Motif. My doctoral work will involve the integration of several different existing software packages, one of which is AthenaMuse 2, which I'll be using as the visual component. And there are several other software pieces which I'm using. One of them is an expert system, which I'll be using for the analysis of subsurface conditions.
Passage 2
Kinnicutt: I've been here since 1985, and over that time, I've seen Athena change. Sometimes we have to go back and rewrite some code which becomes obsolete. Initially, the project started using X-Windows System Version 10, and a programming library called X Objects, which was developed here. When we changed to XWindows Version 11, all the X Objects code became obsolete, and Nomad had to be almost entirely rewritten using X-Windows System Version 11 and Motif. Recently Athena has been phasing out the RTs and VAXstations, and replacing them with DEC 5000 color workstations as the base. The switch has gotten quite a few developers really busy porting their code. Initially, when I started writing my own code, I wasn't really thinking about portability issues. Over the time, that's changed drastically. Now, I try to make the extra effort to make sure that my code is portable the first time.
Passage 3
Kinnicutt: I think that funding had a big impact on the project. If funding were available, the project would be more developed by now. We definitely would have had animation, and we have ideas of creating several other chapters. One would be mineral identification. But for the visual identification of minerals, we would need to have some video segments showing the testing of the minerals. The constraint is financial, since we don't have any funding to make video disks, or put other resources together. Right now, all the money for our project is through outside resources, and not directly for the project itself.
Passage 4
Kinnicutt: Work on this project was cyclic. I was a Teaching Assistant for a C programming course, and that involved times in the office to help students.
 
Hopper: Do you find any particular pattern in how long you work on development at a time?
 
Kinnicutt: For me, the task drives how much time I spend on a particular day. I set aside some agenda I wanted to accomplish, and then did it from beginning to end. I would work until I got it done. It could be 5 p.m., or it could be midnight.
Passage 5
Kinnicutt: I didn't have any formal training on how to develop portable code. I did my own reading, a C book, Portable C. I read that, and several other books. It does make life easier in the long run.
 
Hopper: Are you responsible for training the next person to be aware of portability issues? Is this something that can be communicated, or is it something you can only learn through experience.
 
Kinnicutt: I think it's something that can be communicated, but I think it's best communicated by looking at examples of other people's code.
© Mary E. Hopper [MEHopper] | MEHopper@TheWorld.com [posted 01/01/01 | revised 02/02/02]