 |
|
| |
|
|
|
at Global Oneness Community.
Share your dreams and let others help you with the interpretation!
Dream Sharing Forum
|
|
Software engineering - Comparing related fields | | Software engineering - Comparing related fields: Encyclopedia II - Software engineering - Comparing related fields | | Many fields are closely related to software engineering; here are some key similarities and distinctions. Comparing SE with other fields helps explain what SE is and helps define what SE might or should become. There is considerable debate over which fields SE most resembles (or should most resemble). These complex and inexact comparisons explain why some see software engineering as its own field.
< ...
See also:Software engineering, Software engineering - Terminology, Software engineering - Origins, Software engineering - Meanings, Software engineering - Debate over who is a software engineer, Software engineering - Levels, Software engineering - Software engineering today, Software engineering - Room for improvement, Software engineering - Technologies and practices, Software engineering - Education, Software engineering - Graduate, Software engineering - Undergraduate, Software engineering - Secondary, Software engineering - Employment, Software engineering - Roles in industry, Software engineering - Employers, Software engineering - Certification, Software engineering - Process and methodology, Software engineering - Comparing related fields, Software engineering - What is the nature of SE?, Software engineering - Branch of which field?, Software engineering - History, Software engineering - 60 year time line, Software engineering - Future directions for software engineering, Software engineering - Conferences organizations and publications, Software engineering - Conferences, Software engineering - Organizations, Software engineering - Publications, Software engineering - External links, Software engineering - Quotes | | | Software engineering, Software engineering - 60 year time line, Software engineering - Branch of which field?, Software engineering - Certification, Software engineering - Comparing related fields, Software engineering - Conferences, Software engineering - Conferences organizations and publications, Software engineering - Debate over who is a software engineer, Software engineering - Education, Software engineering - Employers, Software engineering - Employment, Software engineering - External links, Software engineering - Future directions for software engineering, Software engineering - Graduate, Software engineering - History, Software engineering - Levels, Software engineering - Meanings, Software engineering - Organizations, Software engineering - Origins, Software engineering - Process and methodology, Software engineering - Publications, Software engineering - Quotes, Software engineering - Roles in industry, Software engineering - Room for improvement, Software engineering - Secondary, Software engineering - Software engineering today, Software engineering - Technologies and practices, Software engineering - Terminology, Software engineering - Undergraduate, Software engineering - What is the nature of SE? | | |
| | | Software engineering: Encyclopedia II - Software engineering - Comparing related fields
Software engineering - Comparing related fields
Many fields are closely related to software engineering; here are some key similarities and distinctions. Comparing SE with other fields helps explain what SE is and helps define what SE might or should become. There is considerable debate over which fields SE most resembles (or should most resemble). These complex and inexact comparisons explain why some see software engineering as its own field.
Software engineering - What is the nature of SE?
Software engineering resembles many different fields in many different ways. The following paragraphs make some simple comparisons.
Mathematics
Programs have many mathematical properties. For example the correctness and complexity of many algorithms are mathematical concepts that can be rigorously proven. Programs are finite, so in principle, developers could know many things about a program in a rigorous mathematical way. The use of mathematics within software engineering is often called formal methods. However, computability theory shows that not everything useful about a program can be proven. Mathematics works best for small pieces of code and has difficulty scaling up. Edsger Dijkstra has argued that software engineering is a branch of mathematics.
Science
Programs have many scientific properties that can be measured. For example, the performance and scalability of programs under various workloads can be measured. The effectiveness of caches, bigger processors, faster networks, newer databases are scientific issues. Mathematical equations can sometimes be deduced from the measurements. Scientific approaches work best for system-wide analysis, but often are meaningless when comparing different small fragments of code.
Engineering
Software Engineering is considered by many to be an engineering discipline because there are pragmatic approaches and expected characteristics of engineers. Proper analysis, documentation, and commented code are signs of an engineer. David Parnas has argued that software engineering is engineering.
Manufacturing
Programs are built in as a sequence of steps. By properly defining and carrying out those steps, much like a manufacturing assembly line, advocates hope to improve the productivity of developers and the quality of final programs. This approach inspires the many different processes and methodologies.
Project management
Commercial (and many non-commercial) software projects require management. There are budgets and schedules to set. People to hire and lead. Resources (office space, computers) to acquire. All of this fits more appropriately within the purview of management.
Art
Programs contain many artistic elements, akin to writing or painting. User interfaces should be aesthetically pleasing to users. Code should be aesthetically pleasing to programmers. Many goals of good design are NP-complete or worse (such as minimizing the number of lines of code, minimizing number of variables, etc.), meaning they are not decided objectively by either man or computer, so they must be decided by one's own sense of aesthetics. Even the decision of whether a variable name or class name is clear and simple is an artistic question. Donald Knuth famously argued that programming is an art.
Performance
The act of writing software requires that developers summon the energy to find the answers they need while they are at the keyboard. Creating software is a performance that resembles what athletes do on the field, and actors and musicians do on stage. Some argue that SEs need inspiration to spark the creation of code. Sometimes a creative spark is needed to create the architecture or to develop a unit of code to solve a particularly intractable problem. Others argue that discipline is the key attribute. Pair programming emphasizes this point of view. Both Kent Beck and Watts Humphrey have argued this emphasis.
Software engineering - Branch of which field?
Is SE (or should SE be) a branch of programming, a branch of computer science, a branch of traditional engineering, or a field that stands on its own? There is considerable debate over this. This has important implications for professionalism, licensing, and ethics. Licensing is a polarizing issue: some fiercely advocate it while others staunchly oppose it.
Branch of programming
Programming emphasizes writing code, independent of projects and customers. Software engineering emphasizes writing code in the context of projects and customers by making plans and delivering applications. As a branch of programming, SE would probably have no significant licensing or professionalism issues.
Branch of computer science
Many believe that software engineering is a part of computer science, because of their close historical connections and their relationship to mathematics. They advocate keeping SE a part of computer science. Both computer science and software engineering care about programs. Computer science emphasizes the theoretical, eternal truths while software engineering emphasizes practical, everyday usefulness. Some argue that computer science is to software engineering as physics and chemistry are to traditional engineering. As a branch of computer science, SE would probably have few licensing or professionalism concerns.
Branch of engineering
Others advocate making SE a part of traditional engineering. This is especially true for people who want to emulate other elements of engineering, such as licensing. Both engineering and software engineering share many project management problems and solutions. But, they apply different technologies, they use different kinds of processes, and are driven by different economics. As a branch of engineering, SE would probably adopt the engineering model of licensing and professionalism.
Freestanding field
Recently, software engineering has been finding its own identity and emerging as an important freestanding field. Practitioners are slowly realizing that they form a huge community in their own right. Software engineering may need to create a form of regulation/licensing appropriate to its own circumstances. It is arguable that licensing (in the United States) is inappropriate because the creation of software represents a form of writing, and requiring people to be licensed in order to write computer programs may be a violation of the First Amendment. Requiring software engineers to be licensed would make persons who create software without a license into criminals, even if they give their software away, same as practicing medicine or law without a license, even for free, is a criminal offense. It could also be argued the requirement of licensing of programmers could be "prostituted" into an orthodoxy where those who create software in ways or using methods which are not approved by the licensing authorities may be subject to sanctions up to and including loss of license. Thus the licensing authorities could conceivably hold people to whatever "flavor of the month" of software engineering standards are considered a good idea at that time, under threat of loss of livelihood.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics treats Computer software engineers as a freestanding field. The general category of "engineers" includes computer hardware engineers, but not computer software engineers
See also Comparing software engineering and related fields.
Other related archives.NET, 1950s, 1960s, 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1990s, 2002, ABET, ACM, Agile Development, Agile software development, Art, As of 2002, As of 2004, Asia, Aspect-oriented programming, Aspects, Association for Computing Machinery, Barry Boehm, British Computer Society, C. A. R. Hoare, CCSE, CMM, Canadian University Software Engineering Conference, Certification (software engineering), Comparing software engineering and related fields, Computer specialists, Craig Larman, Criticism of software engineering, David Parnas, Debates within software engineering, Donald Knuth, E.U., Edsger Dijkstra, Engineering, Experimental software engineering, Extreme programming, F.L. Bauer, Fred Brooks, Garmisch, Hal Helms, Hartmut Pilch, History of software engineering, ICSE, IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, ISO 9000, IT, Important publications in software engineering, Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, Java, Joel Spolsky, Kent Beck, List of software engineering topics, MIS, Manufacturing, Mathematics, Minicomputers, NP-complete, No Silver Bullet, Object Orientation, Object-oriented programming, PHP, Pair programming, Performance, Personal computers, Philippe Kruchten, Programming, Project management, RUSSOFT Association, Rochester Institute of Technology, SE pioneers, Science, Society of Software Engineers, Software Craftsmanship, Software Engineering Institute, Software development process, Software engineering, Structured Programming, The Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science, TickIT, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S., U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Unix, WWW, Watts Humphrey, agile processes, analysts, application domains, architects, architecture, aspects, boilerplate, coding, complexity, computability theory, computer engineering, computer science, culture, debugging, degrees, developers, education, educators, electrical, engineering, expectations, experience, experiments, extreme programming, formal methods, freelancers, generative programming, ilities, increase in GDP, lean software development, lines of code, locking, logging, managers, mathematics, medical informatics, open source software, open-source, philosophy, physics, practices, processes, profession, programming, project management, researchers, science, secondary schools, software applications, software development, software engineering demographics, software engineering economics, software engineering methodologies, source code, systems analysis, technical support, technologies, technologies and practices, templates, testers, traditional engineering
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Comparing related fields", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
|
|
|
More material related to Software Engineering can be found here:
|
|
|
« Back
|
Search the Global Oneness web site |
|
|
|
|
|
Sneak-Peek of Global Oneness Community
Hi friend! The Global Oneness Community, the place for information and sharing about Oneness is not really launched yet (you will see there is still some clean up to do) ...but it is now open for a sneak-peek! And if you wish - please register and become one of the very first members to do so! Jonas
Forum Home,
Articles,
Photo Gallery,
Videos,
News,
Sitemap
...and much more!
|
