Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!visix!news From: amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Software Engineering (was Re: Documenting OO Systems) Message-ID: <1991Apr15.205218.6914@visix.com> Date: 15 Apr 91 20:52:18 GMT References: <3201:Apr705:40:4591@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1899:Apr1206:12:4991@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> Sender: news@visix.com Followup-To: comp.object Organization: Visix Software Inc., Reston, VA Lines: 56 In article jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) writes: I'm a bit confused. Is it your belief that software engineers do NOT work on problems directly related to the real world? Precisely. Hardware engineers, or electrical engineers, and so on work on problems directly related to the real world. So-called "software engineers" work on problems with symbolic systems that may happen to model aspects of the real world, or may not. In fact, some of the most popular applications of computer technology (and some of the most in need of the techniques often called "software engineering") are problems that are quite explicitly *not* part of the real world: simulation and modelling, statistical and numerical analysis, user interfaces, Usenet... These are all purely symbolic. They involve manipulating symbols and information. I like engineering. Put simply, I like building stuff. Creating a piece of software, though, is a lot more like writing something than building something. You just have a real literal-minded audience :)... I thought that satellites, dishwashers, dialysis machines, airplanes, telecommunications equipment, laptop computers, relational databases, finite element analysis models, and, well, actually, every OTHER thing I've seen software used for was part of the real world. What? You mean I can wash my dishes with software? Wow. What a concept. A relational database is part of the real world? I thought it was a symbolic framework for organizing information (which is about as abstract as it can get). I've seen *hardware* used in the real world, but not software. All I've ever seen software is manipulate symbols. Even low-level stuff like device drivers and barcode scanning software... I think I'd ask them to solve some problems. Probably have them rig up an interface to some device, write some queries for a database, reverse engineer a design from some legacy code, etc etc etc. You know--do some software engineering. In most engineering disciplines, tests are done by testing knowledge, not by testing performance. What you describe sounds more like an exam in art, music, or writing (usually called a "practical" or "recital" exam). Hmm... I wonder how that could be? Think of it as the kind of thing lawyers have to do to pass the bar, or doctors have to do to become doctors. Are lawyers and doctors engineers? Wow, learn something new every day :). -- Amanda Walker amanda@visix.com Visix Software Inc. ...!uunet!visix!amanda -- Entropy requires no maintenance.