Model-integrated computing - Potentials, IEEE

0278-6648/04/$20.00 © 2004 IEEE IEEE POTENTIALS Like any other scientific field, computing emerged as a brilliant idea implemented by brilliant scientists. Unfortunately, the only users of computers for many years were the brilliant scientists who invented them-because only they knew the language that the machines understood. Computers would never have revolutionized the world if the user base of those who could talk to computers had not expanded. Over the past six decades, computer "communicators" have evolved from brilliant scientists computing shell trajectories to grandparents dialing up to check their e-mail. More importantly, computer languages have evolved to meet the demands of the computer users. The continuation of this evolution is the joining of design tools and the executable system, in the form of ModelIntegrated Computing (MIC). The integration of design tools and an executable system is an important step. For the past 10 years, software engineering has been something of an embarrassment to the computer science field. The primary reason is its methodologies seldom work for all domains. For example, the emergence of the internet brought into focus the need for a methodology to design software not as a centralized application but as a client/serverwhich requires a new approach when building that software. This results in a new practice or methodology every few months to make up for the domain on the next horizon (e.g., autonomous agents or grid computing).