A user looks at da—yesterday, today, tomorrow

While much has been written about the technical detail of Design Automation, little has written about how a amp-ldquo;user” views DA. This paper will not address the technical details of Design Automation, nor will it consider the entire range of DA facilities and users in existence today. Instead, the paper will contrast a specific user's needs to the facilities available to that user yesterday and today. This contrast will follow a general definition of the term DA, and a detailed description of the various tasks confronting the particular user. For the purpose of this paper, the user's job is to develop a computing system.