Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!fernwood!apple!uokmax!munnari.oz.au!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!unido!orthogo!basti From: basti@orthogo.UUCP (Sebastian Wangnick) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Development vs Engineering Message-ID: <815@orthogo.UUCP> Date: 30 Oct 90 05:49:08 GMT References: <32087@athertn.Atherton.COM> <32084@athertn.Atherton.COM> <27696@bellcore.bellcore.com> <2450009@hpfcmgw.HP.COM> <84754@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <5682@stpst <11930@pucc Organization: none Lines: 38 Moin, let me put some ideas of mine into this discussion. IMHO, engineering began only 80 years ago when industrial production was reorganized as to seperate planning from execution of work (Taylor, Ford et al). IMHO, it is a legal approach to compare the organization of software making and its evolution to the evolution of industrial production as a whole. Doing so reveals that we have reached the level of [manufaktur (don't know the exact english term)], where previously autonomous workmen come together to share resources and ultimately to divide the making of their goods into little pieces of work that can then be executed by not-so-skilled workers. Somewhere within this process of course the opportunity to become an independent workman again is lost due to specialization. Now (and again IMHO), the pure term software engineering shows the big direction towards industrial software production. Many have tried to proove that the separation of planning and execution of work is not that oeconomical in terms of productivity and profit, but mostly motivated by the need to control the workers. This is true to software making as well. Don't forget that software is becoming an indispensible building block of high-industrialised societies. That leads me to another aspect of this discussion. I often ask myself whether the fundamental organization of exchange in all those societies, money, stemming from the ancient mediterraneans, will be accompanied and maybe ultimately replaced by the exchange of information. The first duty of state was to assure the laws of market. Extending this duty to information exchange we might find that the laws of the information exchange market, for example all those restricted rights legends in the headers of all those program sources on the net, will have to be guaranteed by state, too. But doesn't this lead us to an illiberal police state where every information exchange must be supervised by the state? Sebastian Wangnick (basti@orthogo.uucp)