List of software engineering topics: Encyclopedia II - List of software engineering topics - Influence on society

List of software engineering topics - Influence on society

Software engineers affect society by creating applications. These applications produce value for users, and sometimes produce disasters.

List of software engineering topics - Applications

Software engineers build applications that people use.

Applications influence software engineering by pressuring developers to solve problems in new ways. For example, consumer software emphasizes low cost, medical software emphasizes high quality, and Internet commerce software emphasizes rapid development.

• Business software
  • Accounting software
• Analytics
  • Data mining closely related to database
  • Decision support systems
• Airline reservations
• Banking
  • Automatic teller machines
  • Cheque processing
  • Credit cards
• Commerce
  • Trade
  • Auctions (EBay)
  • Reverse auctions
  • Bar code scanners
• Compilers
  • Parsers
  • Compiler optimization
  • Interpreters
  • Linkers
  • Loaders
• Communication
  • Email
  • Instant messengers
  • VOIP
  • Calendars - scheduling and coordinating
  • Contact managers
• Computer graphics
  • Animation
  • Special effects for video and film
  • Editing
  • Post-processing
• Cryptography
• Databases, support almost every field
• Embedded systems Both software engineers and traditional engineers write software control systems for embedded products.
  • Automotive software
  • Avionics software
  • Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) software
  • Medical device software
  • Telephony
  • Telemetry
• Engineering All traditional engineering branches use software extensively. Engineers use spreadsheets, more than they ever used calculators. Engineers use custom software tools to design, analyze, and simulate their own projects, like bridges and power lines. These projects resemble software in many respects, because the work exists as electronic documents and goes through analysis, design, implementation, and testing phases. Software tools for engineers use the tenets of computer science; as well as the tenets of calculus, physics, and chemistry.
  • Computer Aided Design (CAD)
  • Electronic Design Automation (EDA)
  • Numerical Analysis
  • Simulation
• File
  • FTP
  • File sharing
• Finance
  • Bond market
  • Futures market
  • Stock market
• Games
  • Poker
  • Multiuser Dungeons
  • Video games
• Information systems, support almost every field
  • LIS Management of laboratory data
  • MIS Management of financial and personnel data
• Logistics
  • Supply chain management
• Manufacturing
  • Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM)
  • Distributed Control Systems (DCS)
• Music
  • Music sequencers
  • Sound effects
  • Music synthesis
• Networks and Internet
  • Domain Name System
  • Protocols
  • Routers
• Office suites
  • Word processors
  • Spreadsheets
  • Presentations
• Operating systems
  • Embedded
  • Graphical
  • Multitasking
  • Real-time
• Robotics
• Signal analysis
  • Image processing, encoding and interpreting visual information
  • Signal processing, encoding and interpreting signals
  • Speech processing
  • Text recognition
  • Handwriting recognition
• Simulation, supports almost every field.
  • Engineering, A software simulation can be cheaper to build and more flexible to change than a physical engineering model.
  • Sciences
• Sciences
  • Genomics
• Traffic Control
  • Air traffic control
  • Ship traffic control
  • Automotive traffic control
• Training
  • Drill
  • Simulation
  • Testing
• Visualization, supports almost every field
  • Architecture
  • Engineering
  • Sciences
• Voting
• World wide web
  • Browsers
  • Servers

List of software engineering topics - Disasters

Software has played a role in many high-profile disasters.

• Ariane 5 Flight 501
• Mars probes
• Denver International Airport
• TAURUS - UK share settlement system and dematerialised central share depository.
• Therac-25 - A radiation therapy machine responsible for six overdoses due to faulty software.
• Airbus A320 - The Airbus A320, while a highly safe and successful aircraft, was highly controversial in software engineering circles, being the first civilian Fly-by-wire aircraft. In the Airbus flight control systems, the computer has the final say on all decisions, meaning the safety of passengers depends upon the accuracy of the software specification, and the competence of the engineering teams producing the (multiple, independent) software stacks. Other than the crash of the original plane (in which a demonstration of stability outside the envelope went awry) whose cause is still not fully known, the sole crash which has been attributed to software was the Strasbourg A320 crash of Jan 21, 1992. In this crash which killed 87 people, the pilots had the flat panel display in the wrong mode. It is believed that the pilots had a console in flight path angle mode, instead of vertical speed entry. On entering a vertical speed, the aircraft descended into the mountains, without issuing any kind of warning. This accident shows a fundamental problem of software engineering: even if you implement the specification perfectly, an error in the specification (here, what constitutes an effective user interface), can still be lethal. It also shows another problem with computer controlled vehicles: there is vested interest by the manufacturers to attribute responsibility to the (often deceased) flight crew/drivers, rather than in the design of the vehicle.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Influence on society", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki