How Software Engineering Differs From Computer Science

cconnell sends in a piece he wrote for Dr. Dobb's which "argues that software development will never be a fully formal, rigorous discipline, and the reason is that software engineering involves humans as central to the process." Quoting: "Software maintainability, for example, is the ability of people to understand, find, and repair defects in a software system. The maintainability of software may be influenced by some formal notions of computer science — perhaps the cyclomatic complexity of the software's control graph. But maintainability crucially involves humans, and their ability to grasp the meaning and intention of source code. The question of whether a particular software system is highly maintainable cannot be answered just by mechanically examining the software. The same is true for safety. Researchers have used some formal methods to learn about a software system's impact on people's health and property. But no discussion of software safety is complete without appeal to the human component of the system under examination."

Comments

Re:Software Engineering is trying

[Anonymous Coward]

.. to become a rigorous engineering discipline. It's not quite there yet. I am not convinced that it ever will be. Writing software is a creative process, arguably even an artistic one. Well understood rules can be followed, provably correct algorithms applied, formal design methods used, but it is still a human creative process, and as such, I suspect inherently non-rigorous.
Computer Science compared to Software Engineering?
Think aeronautics. The science of aeronautics ponders the laws of aerodynamics and the laws of flight.
Engineering aeronautics is all about building the damn aircraft.

http://blog.soufun.com/blogweb/blog_manage/gratulate.aspx/userid=23799432
http://my.home.news.cn/blog/control/home.do
http://home.myspace.cn/index.cfm?fuseaction=user
http://my.51.com/webim/index.php
http://10553007.blog.hexun.com/32715836_d.html
http://sys2.blogcn.com/control/article.do?method=list
http://blog.chinamil.com.cn/user_index.asp
http://blog.sanfo.com/user_index.asp
http://blog.titan24.com/blog.php?uid=414198
http://liulangqiuxie.blog.china.com/index.html
http://blog.zjol.com.cn/spacecp.php?docp=me
http://www.blogbus.com/user/?blogid=4969180&mm=Post&page=&sortid=
http://www.mastv.cc/mastvblog/user_index.asp
http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1192639293
http://blogs.albawaba.com/admin.php
http://blog.ycool.com/index.php
http://home.q.yesky.com/space-4194762.html
http://blogs.66law.cn/users/liulangqiuxie/
http://blog.aweb.com.cn/user/manage/articles.jsp