Overview of and topical guide to software engineering
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to software engineering:
Software engineering – application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software; that is the application of engineering to software.[1]
The ACM Computing Classification system is a poly-hierarchical ontology that organizes the topics of the field and can be used in semantic web applications and as a de facto standard classification system for the field. The major section "Software and its Engineering" provides an outline and ontology for software engineering.
Software applications
Software engineers build software (applications, operating systems, system software) that people use.
Applications influence software engineering by pressuring developers to solve problems in new ways. For example, consumer software emphasizes low cost, medical software emphasizes high quality, and Internet commerce software emphasizes rapid development.
- Business software
- Analytics
- Airline reservations
- Banking
- Commerce
- Compilers
- Communication
- Computer graphics
- Cryptography
- Databases, support almost every field
- Embedded systems Both software engineers and traditional engineers write software control systems for embedded products.
- Engineering All traditional engineering branches use software extensively. Engineers use spreadsheets, more than they ever used calculators. Engineers use custom software tools to design, analyze, and simulate their own projects, like bridges and power lines. These projects resemble software in many respects, because the work exists as electronic documents and goes through analysis, design, implementation, and testing phases. Software tools for engineers use the tenets of computer science; as well as the tenets of calculus, physics, and chemistry.
- File
- Finance
- Games
- Information systems, support almost every field
- LIS Management of laboratory data
- MIS Management of financial and personnel data
- Logistics
- Manufacturing
- Music
- Network Management
- Networks and Internet
- Office suites
- Operating systems
- Robotics
- Signal processing, encoding and interpreting signals
- Simulation, supports almost every field.
- Sciences
- Traffic Control
- Training
- Visualization, supports almost every field
- Voting
- World Wide Web
Software engineering topics
Programming paradigm, based on a programming language technology
Databases
Graphical user interfaces
Programming tools
Libraries
Design languages
Patterns, document many common programming and project management techniques
Processes and methodologies
- Agile
- Heavyweight
- Process Models
- Metamodels
Platforms
A platform combines computer hardware and an operating system. As platforms grow more powerful and less costly, applications and tools grow more widely available.
Other Practices
Other tools
Computer science topics
Skilled software engineers know a lot of computer science including what is possible and impossible, and what is easy and hard for software.
Mathematics topics
Discrete mathematics is a key foundation of software engineering.
Other
Life cycle phases
Deliverables
Deliverables must be developed for many SE projects. Software engineers rarely make all of these deliverables themselves. They usually cooperate with the writers, trainers, installers, marketers, technical support people, and others who make many of these deliverables.
- Application software — the software
- Database — schemas and data.
- Documentation, online and/or print, FAQ, Readme, release notes, Help, for each role
- Administration and Maintenance policy, what should be backed-up, checked, configured, ...
- Installers
- Migration
- Upgrade from previous installations
- Upgrade from competitor's installations
- Training materials, for each role
- Support info for computer support groups.
- Marketing and sales materials
- White papers, explain the technologies used in the applications
Business roles
Management topics
Business topics
History of software engineering
History of software engineering
Pioneers
Many people made important contributions to SE technologies, practices, or applications.
- John Backus: Fortran, first optimizing compiler, BNF
- Victor Basili: Experience factory.
- F.L. Bauer: Stack principle, popularized the term Software Engineering
- Kent Beck: Refactoring, extreme programming, pair programming, test-driven development.
- Tim Berners-Lee: World Wide Web
- Barry Boehm: SE economics, COCOMO, Spiral model.
- Grady Booch: Object-oriented design, UML.
- Fred Brooks: Managed System 360 and OS 360. Wrote The Mythical Man-Month and No Silver Bullet.
- Larry Constantine: Structured design, coupling, cohesion
- Edsger Dijkstra: Wrote Notes on Structured Programming, A Discipline of Programming and Go To Statement Considered Harmful, algorithms, formal methods, pedagogy.
- Michael Fagan: Software inspection.
- Tom Gilb: Software metrics, Software inspection, Evolutionary Delivery ("Evo").
- Adele Goldstine: Wrote the Operators Manual for the ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer, and trained some of the first human computers
- Lois Haibt: FORTRAN, wrote the first parser
- Margaret Hamilton: Coined the term "software engineering", developed Universal Systems Language
- Mary Jean Harrold: Regression testing, fault localization
- Grace Hopper: The first compiler (Mark 1), COBOL, Nanoseconds.
- Watts Humphrey: Capability Maturity Model, Personal Software Process, fellow of the Software Engineering Institute.
- Jean Ichbiah: Ada
- Michael A. Jackson: Jackson Structured Programming, Jackson System Development
- Bill Joy: Berkeley Unix, vi, Java.
- Alan Kay: Smalltalk
- Brian Kernighan: C and Unix.
- Donald Knuth: Wrote The Art of Computer Programming, TeX, algorithms, literate programming
- Nancy Leveson: System safety
- Bertrand Meyer: Design by Contract, Eiffel programming language.
- Peter G. Neumann: RISKS Digest, ACM Sigsoft.
- David Parnas: Module design, social responsibility, professionalism.
- Jef Raskin: Developed the original Macintosh GUI, authored The Humane Interface
- Dennis Ritchie: C and Unix.
- Winston W. Royce: Waterfall model.
- Mary Shaw: Software architecture.
- Richard Stallman: Founder of the Free Software Foundation
- Linus Torvalds: Linux kernel, free software / open source development.
- Will Tracz: Reuse, ACM Software Engineering Notes.
- Gerald Weinberg: Wrote The Psychology of Computer Programming.
- Elaine Weyuker: Software testing
- Jeannette Wing: Formal specifications.
- Ed Yourdon: Structured programming, wrote The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer.
See also
