Field
Software Engineering
Also Known As SWE Common industry abbreviation, as in job titles such as "SWE II".
Electrical Engineering
Software engineering is the branch of engineering concerned with the systematic design, development, testing and maintenance of computer software, applying engineering discipline such as specification, design review, testing and version control to a medium that has no physical mass and can be copied without cost. The term and the formal discipline date to the late 1960s, when the growing size and unreliability of software systems prompted engineers to argue that writing software needed the same rigor as building a bridge.
Facts
Origin YearThe term software engineering was coined for the 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference in Garmisch, West Germany. Core ConcernThe systematic design, development and maintenance of computer software. 1 Core PrincipleThe IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology defines the field by its discipline: the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation and maintenance of software, treating programming as an engineering practice rather than a craft. 2 Software Engineering
Filter Results14 entries
Connections
Associated With
Source Agricultural Engineering (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Computer engineering and software engineering meet at firmware and low-level system software.
Developed the first compiler and helped found the discipline of software engineering practice.
Robot behavior, perception and control depend on software running on embedded systems.
Described the waterfall model of the software development process.
Includes
Ada Lovelace, Engineers Software engineering did not exist as a named discipline in her lifetime. She is linked here as the field own recognized precursor, for Note G and its accompanying description of a machine that manipulates symbols by rule.
Source Adas Algorithm: How Lord Byrons Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital AgeJames Essinger
Source Agile software development (Wikipedia)
Source A History of TechnologyCharles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors
Source Extreme programming (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source File Transfer Protocol - Wikipedia
Source Firewall (computing) (Wikipedia)
Source Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information AgeKurt W. Beyer
Source JPEG (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source Pair programming, Wikipedia
Source Rapid application development, Wikipedia
Source Wikipedia: Secure Shell
Source Wikipedia: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Source Wikipedia: Single sign-on
Source Technology: A World HistoryDaniel R. Headrick
Source Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source Transport Layer Security - Wikipedia
Source Version control, Wikipedia
Source A History of TechnologyCharles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors
Source Waterfall model (Wikipedia)
Source Winston W. Royce (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Open Questions
Source Software Engineering (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.View the Source 2. Software Engineering (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationTerminology, Definition section
The application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software.
Lead section, opening definition of software engineering
Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications.
- In Group: Computing and Software Systems Engineering, lead sentence: a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications
View the Source Technology: A World History
Daniel R. Headrick, Oxford University Press, 2009Includes: The InternetView the Source Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age
Kurt W. Beyer, MIT Press, 2009Includes: Grace Hopper
Adas Algorithm: How Lord Byrons Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age
James Essinger, Melville House, 2014Includes: Ada Lovelace
A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954- Includes: Vint Cerf
- Includes: Bob Kahn
View the Source Agricultural Engineering (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Agricultural Engineering, Lead sectionView the Source Winston W. Royce (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Winston W. Royce, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Winston W. Royce, Categories
American software engineers
Waterfall model (Wikipedia)
Includes: Waterfall Model, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Waterfall Model, Categories
Software development philosophies
Agile software development (Wikipedia)
Includes: Agile Software Development, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Agile Software Development, Categories
Agile software development
Extreme programming (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Extreme Programming, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Extreme Programming, Categories
Agile software development
Pair programming, Wikipedia
Includes: Pair Programming, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Pair Programming, Categories
Agile software development
Rapid application development, Wikipedia
Includes: Rapid Application Development, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Rapid Application Development, Categories
Programming tools
Firewall (computing) (Wikipedia)
Includes: Firewall, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Firewall, Categories
Firewall software
Version control, Wikipedia
Includes: Version Control System, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Version Control System, Categories
Distributed version control systems
HTTP - Wikipedia
Includes: Hypertext Transfer Protocol, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Hypertext Transfer Protocol, Categories
World Wide Web Consortium standards
File Transfer Protocol - Wikipedia
Includes: File Transfer Protocol, CategoriesQuote, Includes: File Transfer Protocol, Categories
Internet Standards
CSS - Wikipedia
Includes: Cascading Style Sheets, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Cascading Style Sheets, Categories
Typesetting programming languages
Transport Layer Security - Wikipedia
Includes: Transport Layer Security, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Transport Layer Security, Categories
Cryptographic protocols
Wikipedia: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Includes: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, CategoriesQuote, Includes: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, Categories
Internet mail protocols
JPEG (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: JPEG, CategoriesQuote, Includes: JPEG, Categories
Lossy compression algorithms
Wikipedia: Secure Shell
Includes: Secure Shell, Lead sectionQuote, Includes: Secure Shell, Lead section
The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH Protocol) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network.
Wikipedia: Single sign-on
Includes: Single Sign-On, Lead sectionQuote, Includes: Single Sign-On, Lead section
Single sign-on (SSO) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID to any of several related, yet independent, software systems.
Open Questions (1 open question)
Is software engineering genuinely a form of engineering in the licensed-profession sense, and should software engineers be licensed as Professional Engineers the way civil or electrical engineers are?
Wikipedia's software engineering article records that "the NCEES began offering a Professional Engineer exam for Software Engineering in 2013...NCEES ended the exam after April 2019 due to lack of participation. Mandatory licensing is currently still largely debated, and perceived as controversial." The same article notes the ACM and IEEE Computer Society examined licensing in the 1990s and concluded it was inappropriate for industrial practice, a conclusion the article says was not universally accepted.
What would resolve this A revival of the licensing exam with sustained participation, or a clear professional consensus statement from ACM/IEEE Computer Society settling whether licensure suits the field, neither of which exists yet.
Wikipedia contributors, Software Engineering (Wikipedia)
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
After the ACM and IEEE Computer Society jointly concluded in the 1990s that licensing software engineers as Professional Engineers was inappropriate for the professional industrial practice of software engineering, Knight and Leveson published a 2002 analysis of the licensing question that Wikipedia's software engineering article describes as "a more balanced analysis of the licensing issue," implying the 1990s conclusion was not the last word and that a case for licensing remained live.
A dissenting reading, from John C. Knight and Nancy G. LevesonWikipedia contributors, Software Engineering (Wikipedia), Wikimedia Foundation
Frequently Asked Questions
Is software engineering the same as computer science?
No, though the two overlap heavily. Computer science studies computation itself, algorithms, data structures, theory of computation and how computers process information. Software engineering applies engineering discipline, systematic design, testing, maintenance and process management, to building software that works reliably at scale over its whole lifecycle. A computer scientist might prove an algorithm's properties; a software engineer builds, tests and maintains the system that uses it in production.
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