Engineering in the Academy

28 Computer Software Engineering in the Academy T here is no universally accepted definition of software engineering. For some, software engineering is just a glorified name for programming. If you are a programmer, you might put “software engineer” on your business card—never “programmer,” though. Others have higher expectations. A textbook definition of the term might read something like this: “the body of methods, tools, and techniques intended to produce quality software.” Rather than just emphasizing quality, we could distinguish software engineering from programming by its industrial nature, leading to another definition: “the development of possibly large systems intended for use in production environments, over a possibly long period, worked on by possibly many people, and possibly undergoing many changes,” where “development” includes management, maintenance, validation, documentation, and so forth. David Parnas, a pioneer in the field, emphasizes the “engineering” part and advocates a software engineering education firmly rooted in traditional engineering—including courses on materials and the like—and split from computer science the way electrical engineering is separate from physics. Because this article presents a broad perspective on software education, I will not settle on any of these definitions; rather, I would like to accept that they are all in some way valid and retain all the views of software they encompass. In fact, I am not just focusing on the “software engineering courses” traditionally offered in many universities but more generally on how to instill software engineering concerns into an entire software curriculum. If not everyone agrees on the definition of the discipline, few question its importance. We might have wished for less embarrassing testimonials of our work’s societal relevance than the Y2K scare, but it is still fresh enough in everyone’s mind to remind us how much the world has come to rely on software systems. The institutions that teach software—either as part of computer science or in a specific software engineering program—are responsible for producing software professionals who will build and maintain these systems to the satisfaction of their beneficiaries.