Define -- "Software Engineering"

2nesser asks: "How do you define the term 'Software Engineering'? Some see it as the implementation of the theoretical world of Computer Science, but isn't there more to it than that? Social responsibility, documentation, a program that works under precise, known conditions? Can you compare Software Engineering to other disciplines? What sets a 'Software Engineer' apart from the rest of the crowd?"

Comments

What an ominous question...

[neitzsche]

When I worked for a large government contractor, there was intense interest in having our division become SEI level 3 compliant (then level 4 the next year, then level 5 the next year.)

This question was one of the ones asked by management at the time. They knew then that they were are the mercy of the 80/20 rules:
80% of the code takes 20% of the project time
last 20% of the code takes 80% of the time

80% of the staff does 20% of the work,
20% of the staff does 80% of the work.

etc.

So they tried to reign the "heroes" in. They did so by trying to adapt the over-performing 20% - by limiting what and when they could do, so as to:
A) bring the 80% along and
B) make the 80% not look so bad/suffer from low self esteem.

That division of that company reorganized itself into non-existence in the last few years (it had 1,200 "engineers" when they started in on the SEI stuff.)

--
In my opinion, programming is most efficiently done by individuals, when they are properly motivated. Much of the discipline of "software engineering" practices are VERY good but tend to be taken too far the instant politics are involved. For example, code reviews are essential for production quality code, yet when they become required for the tiniest change they become bureaucratic nightmares.

In my experience, the term 'engineer' has only been thrown about as a political buzzword; sometimes to justify higher education requirements, other times it is used to scare end-users out of filing formal complaints and other times it was used to raise hourly billing rates.

But whenever the term was used, it meant someone was planning on having programmers (ahem, engineers) program less. :-(

With All Due Respect....

[Dr. Bent]

Maybe the reason that you don't seem to think that software development can be stripped down to "first principles" is because you don't have the educational background to know what those principles are. The basic principles taught to Computer Science students around the country are as mathmatically verifiable and repeatable as any other scienctific system (including physics).

Thinks like "Big O" algorithm analysis, data storage techniques, and compiler theory form the basis of Computer Science and provide the structural underpinnings for most of the software engineering methodologies out there today.

I consider myself a software engineer. I certianly do not re-invent the wheel for every project because I have been using the same methodolgy ever since I started programming professionally (OOP). While I am constantly learning new tricks, techniques and technologies, the "first principles" that I learned in school have not changed over the last 50 years of computing history, and they will never change, because they have a firm foundation in mathematics.