Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!hsi!stpstn!cox
From: cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Definition for Software Engineering
Message-ID: <7167@stpstn.UUCP>
Date: 31 May 91 12:08:44 GMT
References: <7569.28438fc3@abo.fi>
Reply-To: cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox)
Organization: Stepstone
Lines: 38

In article <7569.28438fc3@abo.fi> vsaariokari@abo.fi writes:
>	Fritz Bauer has defined software engineering as
>' Establishment and use of sound engineering principles in order to obtain
>economically software that is reliable and works efficiently on real
>machjines'. Has anyone any other definition for Software Engineering?
> ( the best ones may be published in my research )

This of course begs the question of whether anyone in software today
really uses the 'sound engineering principles' he advocates, and thus
whether there's any such thing as 'software engineering' or 'computer
science' today, except of course perhaps as a kind of pre-scientific
theology of the sort that Astronomers (Aristotle, Ptolemy) practiced
before Copernicus.

The definition I go by is in the last sentence of the following excerpt
from "Planning the Software Industrial Revolution'; IEEE Software
magazine; Nov 1990.

"Such confusion is not surprising. The denizens of the software domain,
from the tiniest expression to the largest application, are as
intangible as any ghost. And because we invent them all from first
principles, everything we encounter there is unique and unfamiliar,
composed of components that have never been seen before and will never
be seen again, and that obey laws that don't generalize to future
encounters. Software is a place where dreams are planted and nightmares
harvested, an abstract, mystical swamp where terrible demons compete
with magical panaceas, a world of werewolves and silver bullets. As
long all we can know for certain is the code we ourselves wrote during
the last week or so, mystical belief will reign over quantifiable
reason. Terms like 'computer science' and 'software engineering' will
remain oxymorons -- at best, content-free twaddle spawned of wishful
thinking and, at worst, a cruel and selfish fraud on the consumers who
pay our salaries."

-- 

Brad Cox; cox@stepstone.com; CI$ 71230,647; 203 426 1875
The Stepstone Corporation; 75 Glen Road; Sandy Hook CT 06482