Survey Question

[Stuart Burnfield]

Sue Gallagher said:
> When I first started in the software industry in 1983,
> I heard the president of my company mention that as a
> novel new approach that someone, somewhere, was trying.
> ...while I've heard it mentioned occasionally, I've never
> seen it even tried. Stories about companies who've done
> it are urban legend, I'm convinced.

Mathematica is sometimes cited as having done this:

Summary: User Docs As Specs (Long - but Worthwhile)
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/archives/9607/techwhirl-9607-00198.html

There's also this mention in
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/archives/9601/techwhirl-9601-00884.html

> We are encouraged by the way Steven Wolfram did Mathematica ...
> he wrote and published the entire user manual, then made the
> development team make the software work the way the manual
> said it did ...

If this is true it's probably a special case. Wolfram was the company
founder, CEO and resident genius, so he would have had more authority to
frame the design spec as a draft user reference and make it stick. Few
software tech writers would be in a similar position.

Stuart