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Exploratory software development is a method that applies to the development of programs whose requirement is initially unclear. In such a context, it is only through prototyping and experimenting on the prototypes that the requirement can be fully developed. A good exploratory software development method must have a short development cycle. This thesis describes our attempt to fulfil this demand. We address this issue in the programming language level. A novel programming paradigm - definitive (definition-based) programming - is developed. In definitive programming, a state is represented by a set of definitions (a definitive script) and a state transition is represented by a redefinition. By means of a definition, a variable is defined either by an explicit value or by a formula in terms of other variables. Unless this variable is redefined, the relationship between the variables within the definition persists. To apply this state representation principle, we have developed some definitive notations in which the underlying algebras used in formulating definitions are domain specific. We have also developed an agent-oriented specification language by which we can model state transitions over definitive scripts. The modelling principles of definitive programming rest on a solid foundation in observation and experiment that is essential for exploratory software development. This thesis describes how we may combine definitive notations and the agent oriented programming concept to produce software tools that are useful in exploratory software development. In this way, definitive programming can be considered as a paradigm for exploratory programming.

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The available sources have, to some extent, determined the form of this thesis, which was undertaken in the hope that a more detailed study of the relations between London and the Crown during the years 1 1400_1 1150 would place in perspective the crises with which it begins and ends. The most important source of material for this study has been the Journals of the Court of Aldermen and Common Council which survive from 1416 (the years 1429- 1436 are missing). Historians with the help of a nineteenth century index have quarried in these Journals, but they have never been read through systematically. Journals nos. 3 and 6, having been wrongly bound up, could not be used until, their pages bad been sorted into the correct order from the internal evidence of their contents. The scribes who compiled the Journals were both careless and cautious which increases the difficulty in interpreting their crabbed notes. From studying the Journals dominant themes emerged which were then followed up at the Public Record Office and elsewhere. The conclusions from this study fall into three main categories. The Journals provided a great deal of material from which it was possible to draw a much more detailed picture of the machinery and business of the government of medieval London. T1'e Aldermen and civic officials emerge as conservative, but conscientious, men who might press hardly upon minority interests, but had constantly before their eyes the needs of the City as a whole. Secondly it has been possible to tidy up the chronology of the crises themselves. At such times as Bolingbroke' s usurpation and Cade' a revolt the civic scribes were least active and most cautious. But it seems clear that the London support for both these men has been exaggerated and that the fundamental conservatism of the City governors was not easily rocked, whether by royal scions or Kentish peasants. But this study has proved most useful where the more mundane contact between the Crown and the citizens could be examined, In this way it has been possible to place the financial relations between the King and the City in perspective, and to realize that the King did not come as a beggar to the Londoners, since he had at his disposal all the chartered freedoms and privileges which were essential to the communal and economic life of the City. London, in spite of its great prestige and financial importance, still operated in the fifteenth century within a framework of royal privilege. While the memory of Richard II's action in 1392 was still green the Londoners were in no position to demand redress of grievances before supply. In understanding the delicate balance of the relationship between the Crown and the Londoners it is easier to understand the survival of the Lancastrian dynasty.

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No description available.

No description available.

The way in which quality is modelled within an organisation has typically followed either a fixed-model or a tailorable approach. Fixed-model techniques suffer the disadvantage of inflexibility to local environments, since, the parameters of these models cannot be changed by users or designers to reflect their own views. The tailorable approaches tend to preclude cross-project comparisons. In addition, both techniques lack comprehensive guidelines for building quality into a software product, and lack the ability to resolve conflicts where individuals disagree about the model parameters. In this work, the construction of a new approach is described which overcomes these deficiencies. Since metrics and metric measurement is an important component of quality models, common metrics and measurement techniques are identified, before the construction and evaluation of the new quality modelling approach is presented. A common metric is software size, measurement of which can be performed by use of the Function Point Analysis (FPA) technique. The weighting and adjustment factors of the traditional FPA approach are simplified here, to produce a new estimation technique which can be used at early stages in the development lifecycle. The new model is validated against two project datasets, and the results show a good degree of accuracy when estimating the FPA count, although a lower performance is achieved when estimating actual effort. The major component of this thesis is the construction of the new quality modelling approach, that enables local requirements tailoring whilst providing the ability to perform cross-project comparisons. Unlike existing techniques, comprehensive conflict resolution mechanisms are incorporated, and it is shown that the approach can be used to measure different software entities, allowing direct comparisons between measurements and thus producing more consistent results. The implementation consists of the construction of a software tool supporting the new methodology, and use of both this tool and the technique on real projects at a large financial organisation. The validation of the approach is performed against a list of requirements for a good quality model, and from feedback both from use on the projects and from a questionnaire survey.

The activity of learning programming languages is a difficult and complex process. During this complicated procedure, many problems and difficulties might occur. A straightforward and clear approach, which can help to break down the numerous interacting processes into a series of simpler components, would appear useful. Therefore, the main aim of this research is to design and develop an appropriate method that can meet these criteria. The new method offers a new systematic approach for collecting, modelling and analysing data to discover difficulties within the activity of learning programming. Thus, to achieve these aims, the research work commenced with an investigation into the existing variety of frameworks and methodologies, which have been used in Information Technology (IT). The initial research showed that there are many suitable approaches that have been previously used in the IT field. However, most of these do not offer any clear pathway for collecting and analysing the data from beginning to end of the research process. To address these issues, Activity Theory (AT) has been chosen to be used as an initial framework for the study. AT has been selected due to the nature of the topic being examined. There are several communities involved in the process of learning programming, including students, lecturers, technicians and teaching assistants. AT allows for a holistic consideration of the multiple perspectives involved. In addition, the solid ontology of AT assists with the breakdown of complicated environments into simpler units. However, AT does not specify any particular research methodology that should be used. As a result, an appropriate approach has to be identified and coupled with AT in order to create a new systematic method. The following research methodologies are considered: Action Research (AR), Grounded Theory (GT) and Phenomenography (Ph). It is concluded that GT offers the best approach to complement the use of AT in the context of examining the activity of learning programming languages. Consequently, an initial method has been created by combining AT and GT, which has been used to collect and analyse test cases to investigate whether this combination is effective. After using this initial procedure, changes and improvements were made to create a revised method which has been used to collect and analyse a larger set of data. The results of this research, using three type of case studies of responses from the individual students, focus groups including staff, and observation of the activities in workshop sessions, demonstrated the benefits of the method developed. It was found out that this systematic approach facilitated the process of collecting and analysing the data. In turn, this enabled the discovery of contradictions within the activity of learning programming and the proposed of shifts to solve them. Although this method was tested on first-year students at Kingston University, it is potentially generic, allowing it to be considered for use in other similar domains.