Re: Double Creation

On Wed, 23 Jul 1997, Carlos de Miguel <ectil06[_at_]sis.ucm.es> wrote:
>
> Do you think that it is possible, that two different people, create
> independently the same computer program? Given that both creations
> may vary accidentally in any concrete development or ornament, but
> remaining substantially the same?

It depends a little what you mean by "the same computer program." Microsoft Word and Corel's Wordperfect are both word-processing programs and pretty much do exactly the same thing (and what one doesn't do is picked up in the next version). However, from a programmer's standpoint they are probably quite different in some areas and exactly the same in others (for example, using getchar as the C-language command to get keyboard input).

If you are talking about scientific calculation programs, then there is considerable chance that the code itself is virtually identical, since there are only so many ways to do various calculations, although various aspects, such as input and output might be somewhat different.

Harold Federow
<hfederow[_at_]u.washington.edu> Received on Wed Jul 23 1997 - 22:06:43 GMT