Acknowledgments

John Guttag was a coauthor of an earlier version of this book. Many chapters still bear his stamp. In addition, he has made numerous helpful suggestions about the current material.

Thousands of students have used various drafts of the book, and many of them have contributed useful comments. Scores of graduate students have been teaching assistants in courses based on the material in this book. Many students have contributed to examples and exercises that have found their way into this text. I sincerely thank all of them for their contributions.

My colleagues both at MIT and elsewhere have also contributed in important ways. Special thanks are due to Jeannette Wing and Daniel Jackson. Jeannette Wing (CMU) helped to develop the material on the substitution principle. Daniel Jackson (MIT) collaborated on teaching recent versions of the course and contributed to the material in many ways; the most important of these is the data model used to write requirements specifications, which is based on his research.

In addition, the publisher obtained a number of helpful reviews, and I want to acknowledge the efforts of James M. Coggins (University of North Carolina), David H. Hutchens (Millersville University), Gail Kaiser (Columbia University), Gail Murphy (University of British Columbia), James Purtilo (University of Maryland), and David Riley (University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse). I found their comments very useful, and I tried to work their suggestions into the final manuscript.

Finally, MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and its Laboratory for Computer Science have supported this project in important ways. By reducing my teaching load, the department has given me time to write. The laboratory has provided an environment that enabled research leading to many of the ideas presented in this book.