The Heap

This document is the October 1984 issue of "The Heap," the newsletter for the Languages and Tools Special Interest Group (LTSIG) of DECUS (Digital Equipment Computer Users Society).

Key contents include:

• Editor's Notes: An introduction by new editor Al Folsom, discussing the transition of the SIG name from "Structured Languages SIG" to "Languages and Tools SIG" to better reflect the scope of software engineering productivity tools.
• Symposium News: Extensive coverage of the upcoming Fall DECUS Symposium in Anaheim, including session highlights for Ada, software engineering, and artificial intelligence, as well as information on the LTSIG suite and roadmap sessions.

• Technical Articles:

  • A report on the Seventh International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) covering trends like requirements definition, AI, and rapid prototyping.
  • An overview of the "MATRIX" language, a decision-table-based system used in business data processing, complete with code examples.
  • Technical guidance on converting applications to PDP-11 Pascal.
  • An explanation of the "DEC/TEST Manager" tool designed to automate testing during software development and maintenance.

• Wishlist Results: A detailed breakdown and statistical analysis of the LTSIG membership survey, highlighting user requests for DEC products and SIG activities.

• Standards Report: A comprehensive status report from the Software Engineering Standards Subcommittee (SESS) of the IEEE Computer Society, detailing the status of various software engineering standards (e.g., software quality assurance, unit testing, and design descriptions).