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Debates within software engineering
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Many debates are raging within the software engineering community. As software becomes more pervasive, most recognize the need for better software, but few agree on how to obtain it.
term has been used less formally:
Some people believe that software engineering implies a certain level of academic training, professional discipline, and adherence to formal processes that often are not applied in cases of software development.
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Many debates are raging within the software engineering community. As software becomes more pervasive, most recognize the need for better software, but few agree on how to obtain it.
Ambiguity and controversy
Typical formal definitions of software engineering are:
- "the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software".
- "an engineering discipline that is concerned with all aspects of software production"
- "the establishment and use of sound engineering principles in order to economically obtain software that is reliable and works efficiently on real machines"
The term has been used less formally:
- as the informal contemporary term for the broad range of activities that were formerly called programming and systems analysis;
- as the broad term for all aspects of the practice of computer programming, as opposed to the theory of computer programming, which is called computer science;
- as the term embodying the advocacy of a specific approach to computer programming, one that urges that it be treated as an engineering discipline rather than an art or a craft, and advocates the codification of recommended practices.
Some people believe that software engineering implies a certain level of academic training, professional discipline, and adherence to formal processes that often are not applied in cases of software development. A common analogy is that working in construction does not make one a civil engineer, and so writing code does not make one a software engineer. It is disputed by some - in particular by the Canadian Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) body, that the field is not mature enough to warrant the title "engineering". The PEO disputed that "software engineering" was not an appropriate name for the field since those who practiced in the field and called themselves "software engineers" were not properly licensed professional engineers, and that they should therefore not be allowed to use the name.
In each of the last few decades, at least one radical new approach has entered the mainstream of software development (e.g. Structured Programming, Object Orientation), implying that the field is still changing too rapidly to be considered an engineering discipline. Proponents argue that the supposedly radical new approaches are evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
Individual commentators have disagreed sharply on how to define software engineering or its legitimacy as an engineering discipline. David Parnas has said that software engineering is, in fact, a form of engineering. Steve McConnell has said that it is not, but that it should be. Donald Knuth has said that programming is an art and a science. Edsger W. Dijkstra claimed that the terms software engineering and software engineer have been misused, particularly in the United States.
Regulatory classification
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies computer software engineers as a subcategory of "computer specialists", along with occupations such as computer scientist, programmer, and network administrator. The BLS classifies all other engineering disciplines, including computer hardware engineers, as "engineers".
The U.K. has seen the alignment of the Information Technology Professional and the Engineering Professionals.
Software engineering in Canada has seen some contests in the courts over the use of the title "Software Engineer" The Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (C.C.P.E. or "Engineers Canada") will not grant a "Professional Engineer" status/license to anyone who has not completed a recognized academic engineering program. Engineers qualified outside Canada are similarly unable to obtain a "Professional Engineer" license. Since 2001, the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board has accredited several university programs in software engineering, allowing graduates to apply for a professional engineering licence once the other prerequisites are obtained, although this does nothing to help IT professionals using the title with degrees in other fields (such as computer science).
Some of the United States of America regulate the use of terms such as "computer engineer" and even "software engineer". These states include at least Texas and Florida. Texas even goes so far as to ban anyone from writing any real-time code without an engineering license.
Right to use the word engineering
The word engineering within the term software engineering causes a lot of confusion.
The wrangling over the status of software engineering (between traditional engineers and computer scientists) can be interpreted as a fight over control of the word engineering. Traditional engineers question whether software engineers can legally use the term.
Traditional engineers (especially civil engineers and the NSPE) claim that they have special rights over the term engineering, and for anyone else to use it requires their approval. In the mid-1990s, the NSPE sued to prevent anyone from using the job title software engineering. The NSPE won their lawsuit in 48 states.
However, SE practitioners, educators, and researchers ignored the lawsuits and called themselves software engineers anyway. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses the term software engineer, too. The term engineering is much older than any regulatory body, so many believe that traditional engineers have few rights to control the term. As things stand at 2007, however, even the NSPE appears to have softened its stance towards software engineering and following the heels of several overseas precedents, is investigating a possibility of licensing software engineers in consultation with IEEE, NCEES and other groups "for the protection of the public health safety and welfare" .
In Canada, the use of the words 'engineer' and 'engineering' are controlled in each province by self-regulating professional engineering organizations, often aligned with geologists and geophysicists, and tasked with enforcement of the governing legislation. The intent is that any individual holding themselves out as an engineer (or geologist or geophysicist) has been verified to have been educated to a certain accredited level, and their professional practice is subject to a code of ethics and peer scrutiny. This system was originally designed for the practise of engineering where public safety is a concern, but extends to other branches of engineering as well, including electronics and software .
In New Zealand, IPENZ, the professional engineering organization entrusted by the New Zealand government with legal power to license and regulate chartered engineers (CPEng), recognizes software engineering as a legitimate branch of professional engineering and accepts application of software engineers to obtain chartered status provided he or she has a tertiary degree of approved subjects. Software Engineering is included but Computer Science is normally not.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office considers computer science to be a legitimate field within the "technological arts". Hence a person with an accredited computer science degree will meet the to be licensed as a patent agent or patent attorney or be hired by the patent office as a patent examiner.
Technological arts include engineering (e.g. chemical engineering) and natural sciences (e.g. biology). Technological arts have not included abstract reasoning (e.g. mathematics) or the social sciences (e.g. sociology).
The fields of data engineering, knowledge engineering, user interface engineering, and so on have similar concerns about the term engineering. Even smaller or newer fields of biological engineering, safety engineering, and corrosion engineering have these concerns.
It is important to remember that the foundational subjects of traditional engineering, like advanced calculus and physical science, are tools and do not fully define what engineering actually is. The aspects of innovation and professional judgment apply to both engineering and software development. The well known axiom that we can strive to build systems that are better, faster, and cheaper, but not all three at the same time, applies equally well to traditional engineering as it does to software development.
Substance versus metaphor
Some believe that the name SE means that practitioners must also be traditional engineers. Others believe that engineering is only a metaphor that SEs should apply appropriately.
Substance : Those who define software engineering as a branch of traditional engineering often believe that SEs apply concepts from traditional engineering to software development. This means that software engineering students, like students in other engineering disciplines, should study the science and mathematics necessary to understand the systems they will be designing (in the case of SE, things like computer science and formal methods); practitioners should earn professional licenses; and so on. They believe engineering provides a structured, logical approach, and therefore, a stable final product.
Metaphor : Others are inspired by traditional engineering, but believe that software needs its own solutions. They believe that many traditional engineering concepts cannot apply, because software is fundamentally different from other kinds of products. They believe that students should study computer science and other useful topics, and that practitioners do not necessarily need licenses.
Meanings of terms
Prior to the mid-1990s, most software practitioners called themselves programmers or developers, regardless of their actual jobs. Many people prefer to call themselves software developer and programmer, because most widely agree what these terms mean, while software engineer is still being debated.
Programmer : We widely agree what this means.
Developer : We widely agree what this means.
Software engineer : We disagree what this means.
The term programmer has often been used as a pejorative term to refer to those who lacked the tools, skills, education, or ethics to write quality software. In response, many practitioners called themselves software engineers to escape the stigma attached to the word programmer. In many companies, the titles programmer and software developer were changed to software engineer, for many categories of programmers.
These terms cause confusion, because some denied any differences (arguing that everyone does essentially the same thing with software) while others use the terms to create a difference (because the terms mean completely different jobs).
Fighting over priorities
In the pursuit of better software, the community disagrees on priorities, approaches, and on what an individual should do in specific circumstances. Everyone seems to advocate a different combination of the following issues. Proponents and methodologists advocate conflicting solutions and often heatedly debate their merits. All subfields mix the following priorities to varying degrees.
Management : Some advocate that software engineering is primarily about the management practices necessary to make reliable budgets and schedules. People at the Software Engineering Institute took this approach and created the CMM.
Formal methods : Some advocate applying rigorous mathematical analysis to computer programming, especially proofs of correctness. They believe that traditional engineering is carried out with mathematical rigor, while programming is an iterative, trial-and-error process. These advocates strive to make programming more rigorous.
Process : Some advocate that software engineers must follow step-by-step processes, much like assembly line workers. This inspired CMM, SPICE, and other methods and processes.
Tools : Some advocate that software engineering means tools, especially CASE tools (like Unix tools and IDEs) that emphasize high-level architecture issues. Today's CASE tools emphasize UML.
Ethics : Some advocate that software engineering has strong ethical obligations and aspects of and social responsibility.
Licenses : Some advocate defining software engineering in terms of professional licenses, like some traditional engineers have. The biggest advocates of this position are from Texas and Canada, where government sponsors licenses for SEs.
Degrees : Some advocate defining SE by college degrees. Most professions have college degrees tailored to the needs of practitioners. Many graduate software engineering degrees are available and undergraduate degrees are becoming available.
Attributes : Cost, Time, Quality: Different kinds of applications are sensitive to different attributes. Consumer applications are sensitive to cost. Military and medical applications are sensitive to quality. Business web applications are most sensitive to time. Some researchers argue that one attribute or another (usually quality) matters more than the others. But, software engineers work on all kinds of applications.
Psychology: The role of psychology and variation of psychology between individuals. Are the "best" software organization solutions to be found via formal math-like proofs (such as "formal methods" above), or by matching the developer's psychology to the software design regardless of mathematical purity?
See also
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