The Nature of Software engineering

Mathematics

Programs have many mathematical properties. For example the correctness and complexity of many algorithms are mathematical concepts that can be rigorously proven. Programs are finite, so in principle, developers could know many things about a program in a rigorous mathematical way. The use of mathematics within software engineering is often called formal methods. However, computability theory shows that not everything useful about a program can be proven. Mathematics works best for small pieces of code and has difficulty scaling up.

Engineering

Software Engineering is considered by many to be an engineering discipline because there are pragmatic approaches and expected characteristics of engineers. Proper analysis, documentation, and commented code are signs of an engineer. David Parnas has argued that software engineering is engineering. Programs have many properties that can be measured. For example, the performance and scalability of programs under various workloads can be measured. The effectiveness of caches, bigger processors, faster networks, newer databases are engineering issues. Mathematical equations can sometimes be deduced from the measurements. Mathematical approaches work best for system-wide analysis, but often are meaningless when comparing different small fragments of code.

Manufacturing

Programs are built in as a sequence of steps. By properly defining and carrying out those steps, much like a manufacturing assembly line, advocates hope to improve the productivity of developers and the quality of final programs. This approach inspires the many different processes and methodologies. While others, such as the authors of the Programmer's Stone, contend this view "[is] in fact claiming to be able to implement an Artificial Intelligence that simulates a production line designer".

Project management

Commercial (and many non-commercial) software projects require management. There are budgets and schedules to set. People to hire and lead. Resources (office space, computers) to acquire. All of this fits more appropriately within the purview of management.

Audio and Visual art

Programs contain many artistic elements, akin to writing or painting. User interfaces should be aesthetically pleasing and provide optimal audio and visual communication to end-users. What is considered "good design" is often subjective, and may be decided by one's own sense of aesthetics. Because graphic artists create graphic elements for graphical user interfaces, graphic design often overlaps interaction design in the position of an interface designer.

User interfaces may require technical understanding including graphical integration with code, computer animation technology, automation of graphic production, integrating graphics with sound editing technology, and mathematical application. One could say that "audiovisual engineering" is required.

User interfaces with user-read text and voice may also be enhanced from professional copywriting and technical writing.

Code should be aesthetically pleasing to programmers. Even the decision of whether a variable name or class name is clear and simple is an artistic question. Donald Knuth asserted that programming is an art.

Performance

The act of writing software requires that developers summon the energy to find the answers they need while they are at the keyboard. Creating software is a performance that resembles what athletes do on the field, and actors and musicians do on stage. Some argue that SEs need inspiration to spark the creation of code. Sometimes a creative spark is needed to create the architecture or to develop a unit of code to solve a particularly intractable problem. Others argue that discipline is the key attribute. Pair programming emphasizes this point of view. Both Kent Beck and Watts Humphrey have argued this emphasis.

Copyright 2008 - France BtoB from Wikipédia