Software Engineering and Triz (1) Structured Programming Reviewed with Triz

This is the first report of our research having three-folded purposes as follows: (1) to apply TRIZ to the problems related to software development and to extend the application field of TRIZ into software development and software engineering, (2) to clarify topics of software engineering with the TRIZ views, and further (3) to feed the principles/knowledge in software engineering/computer science back into TRIZ. For these purposes, we are going to make an approach of choosing topics in software engineering one by one and to consider about it with the whole aspects of TRIZ, including Inventive Principles, Inventive Standards, Trends of Evolution, and philosophical elements in TRIZ. The concept of Structured Programming was examined in this paper. When we see the historical disputes on the "Goto-less" issue from the TRIZ' viewpoint of contradictions, we have found it not appropriate to teach: "the Structured Programming is a proposal to use only three basic control constructs and no Gotos, and it is a compromise with practice to add four more constructs" (as is often taught in computer science classes). It is because only with these additions Structured Programming has its sound bases. On the other hand, the approach of Structured Programming urges TRIZ especially in the following points: (a) TRIZ Principe 1 (Segmentation) should be extended to reflect the idea of Stepwise Refinement; (b) TRIZ Principle 6 (Universality) should be extended to include the idea of establishing/using industrial standards (this has been a blind point of TRIZ due to so much stress on inventions); (c) TRIZ Principle 7 (Nesting) should be regarded more important as reflecting the hierarchy concept of systems.