Cover fe ature 47 january 2012 Published by the ieee computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31. 00 2012 ieee

Infrastructure software needs more strin-

gent correctness, reliability, efficiency, and 

maintainability requirements than non- 

essential applications. This implies greater 

emphasis on up-front design, static struc-

ture enforced by a type system, compact 

data structures, simplified code structure, 

and improved tool support. Education for 

infrastructure and application developers 

should differ to reflect that emphasis. 

Bjarne Stroustrup, 

Texas A&M University

Software  

Development for 

Infrastructure

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The increases in demands on hardware 

and software will continue: human 

expectation grows even faster than 

hardware performance.

COVER FE ATURE

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48

One of my inspirations for quality infrastructure soft-

ware is the requirement AT&T placed on switches in its 

telecommunication system backbone: no more than two 

hours of downtime in 40 years (www.greatachievements.

org/?id=3639). Hardware failure, loss of main power, or a 

truck colliding with the building that houses the switch 

isn’t an excuse. To reach such goals, we need to become 

very serious about reliability, which is a vastly different 

mindset from “we must get something—anything—to 

market first.”