A specification (often abbreviated as spec) is an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product, or service.
Taken from Wikipedia: Specification (technical standard)
Questions tagged [specifications]
166 questions
27
votes
2 answers
What Specifications should a Programmer Seek in a Computer Purchase ? Or, What Computer should I buy?
I wish to acquire a new computer that is specially designed for programming.
I would like to build it myself for the learning experience, but am willing to purchase it made as well.
Basically I have downloaded so many files dedicated to programming…
Matthew Moisen
- 411
9
votes
5 answers
Spec Writing Management
I simply cannot imagine writing software without a spec. No matter how sketchy or high level it is, spec is important to explain to the clueless programmers on what are the functionalities of the program.
But the problem with spec is that it is…
Graviton
- 4,005
4
votes
1 answer
Have you ever dealt with writing a spec late in the development lifecycle?
We have an existing code base which has been developed to meet the needs of most of our clients, which has accumulated features and bug fixes as they were needed and as projects developed universally useful features.
Right now, we're running into…
Dan Monego
- 834
3
votes
1 answer
What is the meaning of the data inside wave_format_ieee_float?
I made a program that connected to the microphone and captured wave_format_ieee_float data from it. I noticed that if I made a really loud noise the data seems to fluctuate between -1 and 1 (when I cast the buffer pointer into float*). What is the…
Emil
- 133
3
votes
1 answer
How much effort should I put into the functional specification?
I've spent six full days so far working on a spec for a web-app component. Apart from personally wanting some task that doesn't involve Word, I'm wondering if there is a point at which I know that the spec I'm working on is finished (but isn't a…
Rafael Emshoff
- 553
2
votes
5 answers
Should an XML Schema be specified in a software specification?
Would you include an XML schema for a new file format in a software specification document or would you consider this too specific? Or would it be already too specific to require XML at this point?
h0b0
- 641
2
votes
3 answers
How to specify that a number is a random number, or a rounded number, etc
Trying to better understand how to write specifications for automated theorem proving and testing, etc. One seemingly simple example is generating a random number. I would like to know how to specify this behavior, that a function rand() returns a…
Lance
- 2,587
- 19
- 35
2
votes
1 answer
When to skip solving the general problem and settling for the specific problem?
I've been working hard on trying to develop a general solution to my problem, but I cannot seem to formulate a proper algorithm for it, at least one that doesn't take a ton of inaccurate grunt work building a lookup table.
I have a solution already…
Peter Smith
- 2,587