Week 2 Session: What does it need?

Take a program apart from the outside and write down what it requires, using evidence rather than assumption

1 March 2027

Pick a program. If you already have a candidate for Assignment 1, use it — this is the one session that is directly your assignment work. If not, take one of:

• a CLI tool you use and have never looked inside
• something from your own field with an awkward dependency
• a small game, if you want the graphics question early

Produce a requirements profile, from evidence:

• Runtime. Native? A language VM? Is the thing you care about the program, or the runtime underneath it?
• Processes. Does it spawn, fork, or shell out? strace, or read the source.
• Filesystem. What does it open, and does anything else need to see the same bytes?
• Network. What does it talk to, and does it listen?
• Graphics. Does it draw, and through what?
• Blocking. Does it ever sit and wait?

Write each finding next to how you established it. “I think it forks” and “strace shows 3 clone calls during startup” are not the same claim, and by week 12 you will be marked on knowing the difference.

Then swap with someone whose target is nothing like yours and attack each other’s profile. The useful question is always the same one: how do you know?