Software Engineering as a field has been around for almost fifty years. Have we evolved enough to become a valid field of engineering or are we still mostly a form of artistic endeavor? To what extent do we have a Science of software development yet?
Software engineering is mix of all three, science, engineering, and art. It is science because we need to understand the basics of science such searching, sorting, threading, networking, databases, etc. It’s also engineering because we use processes, tools, standards, testing, certification, metrics, etc. It’s also requires some degree of creativity/artistic talent that makes the final product stands out. The success of the software depends on finding the right mix to all three. For example, in safety critical software science and engineering will dominate, a game software creativity/artistic talent, aesthetics will dominate even though there is a lot of science in games and game engines.
Software engineering is engineering. You want to solve a specific problem with software, you define requirements, choose a platform and tools, define the models and data structures, and then you implement it to specification, debug and validate the solution. Straightforward.
A software Engineering field is an art field. You are more likely to develop different architectures, reporting, process models changing with the environments, Risk solutions, process designing, new tools, new interfaces, How to sum up a big giant program in a box, writing efficient codes.
Moral: it is a science that is based on art. All the science is infact based on creativity.
It is obvious that software engineering is ENGINEERING since there would be some problems to be solved, these problems require "SCIENTIFIC" thinking in order to make the project manageable, but I do believe that developing software require a specific ARTISTIC abilities, especially for what it concerns the interface (and some times the elegance of the algorithms may be very fruitful in order to render the solution very simple and efficient). Thus I believe it is a mixture of the three.
Engineering. But creativity is not the preserve of Art.
http://caminao.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/reinventing-wheel/
Software engineering is mix of all three, science, engineering, and art. It is science because we need to understand the basics of science such searching, sorting, threading, networking, databases, etc. It’s also engineering because we use processes, tools, standards, testing, certification, metrics, etc. It’s also requires some degree of creativity/artistic talent that makes the final product stands out. The success of the software depends on finding the right mix to all three. For example, in safety critical software science and engineering will dominate, a game software creativity/artistic talent, aesthetics will dominate even though there is a lot of science in games and game engines.
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