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==Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment==
] This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available ]. Peer reviewers: ].

{{small|Above undated message substituted from ] by ] (]) 09:44, 17 January 2022 (UTC)}}
==Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment==
] This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between <span class="mw-formatted-date" title="2021-01-25">25 January 2021</span> and <span class="mw-formatted-date" title="2021-05-16">16 May 2021</span>. Further details are available ]. Student editor(s): ]. Peer reviewers: ].


{{small|Above undated message substituted from ] by ] (]) 09:44, 17 January 2022 (UTC)}}
==World perspective on degree courses==
== acqurying for software engineering ==
From what I understand/have evidence of the UK had the first software engineering Bachelor's degree courses. I have linked to a reference that shows that Sheffield was one of the pioners and have had a personal communication with the author that confrimed that Imperial was the first, but have yet to find any evidence. Also it should be noted that there were certainly masters courses in the UK prior to 1987 but again I have not found any other evidence. <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 11:15, 22 July 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


I would,like,to know whether software engineering involve studing about science or learning some science subjects like biology ,physics,mathematics or chemistry <!-- Template:Unsigned --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 10:55, 8 February 2020 (UTC)</small> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
:{{reply|Nsereko Hamza}} Arguably, mathematics is not a science, but some math knowledge is definitely required to be a professional software engineer. You might consider that computer programming is in general just a form of applied mathematics. Not all advanced math is needed, and there is some math specific to computer science like ]. I think whether or not you need to study sciences like biology, chemistry, and physics depends on whether you get a certification or an undergraduate degree, and where from. For example, MIT requires all undergraduates to pass classes in all three of those subjects, no matter what their major. I don't think liberal arts colleges have the same science requirements, and certainly not if you are doing a non-college software engineering certification or boot camp. I'm not sure to what degree this should be explained in the article; would other readers benefit from mentioning any of that? -- ] (]) 03:05, 31 July 2021 (UTC)


== Merge from Software engineer ==
==POV in lead==
<blockquote>The term software engineer is used very liberally in the corporate world. Very few of the practicing software engineers actually hold Software Engineering degrees from accredited universities. In fact, according to the Association for Computing Machinery, "most people who now function in the U.S. as serious software engineers have degrees in computer science, not in software engineering".</blockquote>


] and ] entirely overlap the sections of this article with the same names. The remaining section of ] entirely overlaps with ] and should be merged there. If we want to keep the engineering field and the profession separate, then I'd merge into ] due to use of that term as a synonym and substantial overlap when it's used with a different meaning; see ]. -- ] (]) 02:19, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
This passage seems to carry an implication that software engineering is not an academically vetted title. The provided quotation is used to imply that software engineers are not trained as such; however, it is merely providing a statistical fact, that most software engineers are CS graduates. However, many CS curricula offer or require software engineering tracks -- the source states this. This is akin to saying that most AI researchers aren't "AI degree" holders, as I have yet to hear of any such thing. I think it would more true to say that most schools don't offer software engineering degrees because most don't consider it to be separate from computer science. Since I consider the above passage to be a plainly POV interpretation with selective quoting, I am removing the statement and will replace it with a more neutral one. ] (]) 05:54, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
:{{reply|Johnnie Bob}} You mentioned you have some thoughts on this merge proposal? -- ] (]) 07:36, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' They're much better as separate articles, mainly because they are not the same thing. They are in different knowledge domains. Programmer is slight different as well. It is much better in its own article. '''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px black; font-family:Papyrus">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 10:56, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
*:I'll note we don't usually distinguish the profession from the activity; for example, "cobbler" is covered under ] and "brewer" redirects to ]. Regardless...
*:{{reply|scope_creep}} I assume that would mean removing ] and ]? After merging ] into ], that would leave Education and Profession as the only two sections on ]. I think that's a bit weird given those sections are already in ] and seem to be on-topic here, but is that your preferred outcome? -- ] (]) 18:36, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
:::{{ping|Beland}} I don't think there is any rule against both article having some duplicated content. I just think that the reader would like to see what a software engineer article is as opposed to going through a software engineering article to look for it, which may be wee bit more forbidding. I don't know how many viewers the article its gets, but certainly it is probable more value at the moment, for the reader. Programmer was a term that was really common when I started writing software in the 90's. It was quite a common occurence, but now you barely hear it, except in the sense of looking back, and affirming something that was good and true. Is there a stand-out benefit to combining them? '''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px black; font-family:Papyrus">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 19:18, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
::::{{reply|scope_creep}} I added templates to the talk pages showing daily pageview charts. It looks like ] gets about 600 views per day and ] gets about 1100. (] is getting about 1300 per day after the merge from ].) I think occupation/activity articles are usually combined because they are two aspects of the same subject, it's easier for readers to navigate fewer articles, and better context can be provided in a single article. For example,keeping two articles means that if your question is "What is it that software engineers do?" if you go to the ] article, you won't find the answer there. If your question is, "Are there degree requirements for software engineering?" and you go to the ] article, you won't find the answer there. (And actually that summarizes yet a third article which has more detail on that topic.) In each case, you'd need to discover there's a different article, in such a way that it occurs to you that this specific article (and not one of the many other articles we've linked) might have the answer to your question.
::::Peeking at ], both duplicate content and significantly overlapping content have consensus as good reasons to merge articles. It definitely reduces the workload of article maintenance and improves quality if details are only presented once, and other articles only have ]. -- ] (]) 22:45, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
:::::Hi {{ping|Beland}}. I tried to come up something last night. I was trying to find some research to support keeping them seperate articles but couldn't see much. Yip, it's pretty cogent argument for merging. Certainly, regarding the size of the project, finding the right information is getting harder and harder, as more articles are created. The removal of those Wikiprojects last year, that could have been used as starting entry points for searches, I thought was misplaced. So from that aspect, if it makes it easier to find info on it, then it is probably better to merge. '''<span style="text-shadow:7px 7px 8px black; font-family:Papyrus">]<sup>]</sup></span>''' 10:23, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
::::::OK, I'll start in on it. -- ] (]) 19:34, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
:::::::Merge complete! -- ] (]) 07:19, 1 September 2021 (UTC)


== Possible merge with ] ==
Here is a full paragraph from the source, emphasis mine:
<blockquote>Most people who now function in the U.S. as serious software engineers have degrees in computer science, not in software engineering. In large part this is because '''computer degrees have been widely available for more than 30 years and software engineering degrees have not'''. Positions that require development of large software systems often list “Software Engineer” as the position title. '''Graduates of computer science''', computer engineering, and software engineering programs '''are good candidates''' for those positions, '''with the amount of software engineering study in the programs determining the suitability of that graduate''' for such a position.</blockquote>
] (]) 05:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)


{{ping|User:Beland}} Just read through the ] article and had a glance at this ] article. I'm considering the possibility of merging these two articles together. There seems to be a decent amount of overlap between them, and from my understanding, the names "software developer" and "software engineering" are used interchangeably in terms of job titles. The name of the merged article should probably remain "software development" since that seems to be the more widely used title out of the two (I may be wrong though). Thoughts? ] (]) 20:43, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
== Category box not appearing ==


:{{u|Aitch & Aitch Aitch}}, they are not quite the same thing and you are proposing removing Software Engineering as a topic from Misplaced Pages, leaving only a redirect. Both articles, and the related ] have grown through accretion by editors adding textbook topics. Software engineering's focus on the management of large projects has gotten lost. There is also confusion because business-oriented technology and programming is taught in busiess ] departments in universities and computer science is taught in technical and engineering departments. Both talk about software development, and the ideas of software engineering are moving from technology companies to other businesses. It would be nice if Misplaced Pages articles made sense of this, but eliminating Software Engineering is not the way to do it. ] (]) 22:41, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
<strike>Does anyone know why the Category box isn't showing up? The text is there, but not the usual outline and shading that usually goes along with it.</strike> ] (]) 19:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC) Never mind, looks like it was a problem with the Foundation's advertising banner. ] (]) 19:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


::{{reply|Aitch & Aitch Aitch}} I think merging would be an improvement. We can certainly find sources that say "software developer" and "software engineer" are used interchangably, and also that some organizations do make a distinction. (See ].) The "software engineering" article currently uses "software development" to describe the task more unambiguously called ]. The "software development" article covers the broad array of tasks and treats "software development" and "software engineering" as synonyms, which is what makes them mergeable.
== Not Engineers ==


::{{reply|StarryGrandma}} Merging the articles isn't "eliminating Software Engineering" from Misplaced Pages. The resulting merged article should discuss the specific techniques and considerations some people mean when they say "software engineering", and link to the article on professional aspects of software engineering. I don't see a bright line between "engineering" techniques and "software development methodologies", though - they both encompass pre-coding design, and post-coding testing, maintenance, etc. And they both include the management of projects large and small. So I'm having trouble imagining how to exclude "engineering" from an overview of "software development" in the broad sense. The other way around would also be difficult...we might try to scope for example, ] to cover the social aspects of project management with something to say about testing tools, but the "software engineering" part of Agile is only the actual programming and testing. But that's the opposite of the claim that software development is narrow and software engineering includes all the project management extras. People just use both terms in both broad and narrow senses. -- ] (]) 01:23, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
I see that there is a discussion of this subject in the article. I just want to weigh in that programmers are not engineers because they do not work with physics. All engineering disciplines work with physics, such as kinematics, thermodynamics, or electromagnetics. The naming of this article, as opposed to it simply being a redirect to programmer, is propagating this misuse of the term engineer. <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 15:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


:::{{reply|Beland}} {{reply|StarryGrandma}} Yeah I wasn't suggesting removing software engineering as a topic, I was suggesting merging the two articles together into one concise article since there seems to be a lot of overlap between the two. I'm not particularly an expert at this so I don't really know where to start. I was thinking that the current individual articles should be cleaned up a little before the merge since there is some vague wording and unsourced claims on both articles. ] (]) 20:14, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
With this definition, is it even possible to have a Software "Engineering" discipline or title. It is a stretch to say that Software Engineers use physics (or an understanding of physics) in their daily activities to develop software. Granted, the more a software developer gets into electronics, you could argue that they are an engineer, but...
Maybe they ought to call it "Firmware Engineering". :)
] (]) 13:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


{{od}}{{re|Beland|Aitch & Aitch Aitch}} have not run into another discussion here where I have been at loss for words, but this one has done it. I admit to a few days of being completely speechless. Now I will try to explain without this turning into an academic lecture on the topic. You are proposing blanking the article on the area of software research in which I earned my masters degree in computer science and turning it into a few paragraphs in the software development article.
:What's the source for the assertion that "All engineering disciplines work with physics?" One is:
::1a. The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.
:I don't see any restriction in there to physics. Surely ] is a discipline, but it is based on applications of chemistry, not physics. MIT, whose opinion ought to count for something, has a department of "biological engineering." A discipline of "agricultural engineering" has existed since the early 1900s.
:I don't much like the term "software engineering." I think it carries a lot of ideological baggage with it. To my way of thinking, software development is still very much an art and will be for a very long time. But that's beside the point. The first thing is that it is a well-defined term in widespread use. You might as well complain that there is no such thing as an automobile, because they don't really move by themselves... or that the phrase "steep" learning curve should mean something that is learned very quickly... or that "taxpayer dollars" should be "taxpayer's dollars." It's beside the point. The language is what it is.
:And the reason why software engineering is a misnomer is not that software engineering does not involve physics. It is that it is very hard to find any examples of the use of science or mathematics in a software engineering textbook. ] ] 01:37, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


Software engineering is not another word for software development. It is one particular approach to software development, with an emphasis on quality. This was driven initially by government and military concerns in the US and Europe about the poor state of the products they were being delivered from large-scale, expensive projects. The Department of Defense has funded much of the research in this area and even had a computer language created. Most software development is not done in this way. Technical companies started calling their developers software engineers and more recently people have been referring to software development in some areas as software engineering. But the article is about the topic of software engineering whose history is given at ].
] is a discipline of engineering that is based on application of physics, mathematics, and chemistry. Formal Chemical Engineering curriculum involves only one or two more chemistry courses over what students in other engineering disciplines have to take. <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 16:46, 23 July 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


The confusion between software engineering and software development is also understandable because the article contains so little information about the field of software engineering. The article is one of the oldest in Misplaced Pages. It predates the current database so we don't have the oldest edits. The earliest one we have is 14 November 2001 (and it removes most of the article with the comment "minor copyediting"). There have been 5194 edits since. Sometimes the article has had content about the actual topic of software engineering, as it did early on; sometimes it was mostly about other things. Most SE related stuff is no longer in it or was never in it. Early edits happened before sources were required for material which was available in textbook. Much of the editing seems to have been from students adding textbook-type material rather than from scholarly or technical sources.
== Dijkstra and Software Engineering ==


Universities encourage a careful approach to writing software by trying to influence students. There are two paths to becoming a computer programmer at a level above just writing code. (You can get 2-year degrees in software development at community colleges.) If you want to work for technical companies you take courses in ]. The course that introduces the full range of software development is called Software Engineering and is taught using one of the textbooks titled Software Engineering. If you are interested in business computing you take courses in ]. In IT the course that introduces the full range of software development is called Systems Analysis and Design and is taught from one of the textbooks with the same name. Systems Analysis and Design is business computing's approach to development that emphasizes quality. (Misplaced Pages doesn't have an article on this and it should. It's history and development is also very interesting.)
Does anyone understand Dijkstra well enough to know exactly what he had against software engineering?
See the tables of contents and introductions at
* {{cite book | last=Sommerville | first=Ian | title=Software engineering |edition=10th |url=https://www.amazon.com/Software-Engineering-10th-Ian-Sommerville/dp/0133943038/ | publisher=Pearson | publication-place=Boston | year=2016 | isbn=978-0-13-394303-0 | oclc=907941065}}
* {{cite book | last=Dennis | first=Alan | title=Systems analysis and design |url=https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Analysis-Design-Alan-Dennis-dp-1119585856/dp/1119585856/ | publisher=Wiley | publication-place=Hoboken, NJ | year=2019 | isbn=978-1-119-58585-5 | oclc=1050457747}}
Note that the descriptions of software development are different in the two books.


What really matters is not what students learn but how the companies they will work for approach software development. One of the developments in software engineering was a mechanism for customers to be assured that the software they contract for will be developed using the these methods. The ] (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University, funded by the Department of Defense, developed ]s which assessed a company's software development process. Government contracts required meeting a certain level, and other companies required that their suppliers meet certain levels. Whether that was at all successful is unclear, and the SEI no longer does the assessments.
Quote:
<blockquote>
The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus.
</blockquote>


Software Engineering is a large enough topic with a 50 year history and can't be summed up concisely in the article on software development. That article is already written in ] with sections having main articles of their own anyway. A major topic in computing meets Misplaced Pages's requirements for having an article.
] (]) 01:50, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
<!-- Template:Unsigned --><span class="autosigned" style="font-size:85%;">—&nbsp;Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 21:54, 3 September 2021 (UTC)</span>
::::{{reply|StarryGrandma}} Thanks for the info. Based on what you've said, I can see that keeping the two articles separate is the best decision. I think the core problem is that the articles need to be brought to a higher standard. The "software development" article seems to be in better shape overall but its opening paragraphs (among other parts) are in poor condition. The "software engineering" article needs a lot more work since there are chunks of completely unsourced content. As for the "history of software engineering" article, I would support the idea of it being merged with the "software engineering" article. Starry Grandma, you clearly have a lot more knowledge than me on these topics so I'll ask you if merging "software engineering" with "history of software engineering" is a good idea. All I know for sure is that all three of these articles need a lot of improvement. ] (]) 13:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
:::::{{reply|StarryGrandma}} What would you consider the correct fix to ]? Would "Software engineering" move to the "Paradigms and models" section? Would the first section title then just be "Core activities" implying they could belong to any approach to software development? -- ] (]) 03:04, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
::::::{{u|Beland}}, setting the first section title back to "Core activities" is good. Put Software engineering at the top of the of the "Paradigms and models" section. Most of the topics in that section are also part of current software engineering. If ] ever turns into a real article covering it can go there too. ] (]) 23:11, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
:::::::OK, I made that change to the template. I also added a note to the intro of ] saying software engineering is one approach. I downloaded the SWEBOK and found it likewise uses "software construction" where ] was using "software development". The SWEBOK considers "software development" to be the whole process, as you do. I aligned the article with the source, so that should fix the long-standing confusion of why both of them seemed to include the other.
:::::::In my professional experience, it's not necessary to get a 2-year or 4-year or master's degree to get a computer engineering job. I've met people in those jobs who have physics degrees, who got a humanities degree and went to a programming bootcamp. One of my co-workers who never graduated high school and never went to college was self-taught, and she knew more and was a better engineer than the Tufts and MIT grads. I took Software Engineering at MIT from ], and her book doesn't have "software engineering" in the title.
:::::::I'm not sure there really is a difference between good software development techniques and good software engineering techniques other than branding, as the SWEBOK includes multiple programming methodologies that both were and weren't taught at school, some of which just seem to come from best commercial practices. "Systems analysis and design" looks like a classic "waterfall" style process, but SWEBOK, for example, covers waterfall, agile, TDD, and other approaches. ] might be a good place to describe SAD if you think it's a noteworthy variant.
:::::::If you have specific topics you would like to see added to the ] article, that would be more actionable than describing its 20-year history. We might already cover the desired topics in other articles; I'm happy to see what we have and what's missing. -- ] (]) 00:40, 23 September 2021 (UTC)


===Role vs. process===
:I'm not sure this discussion really belongs here, but I suppose it is relevant to the controversy about the term. I can't claim to be a Dijkstra expert, but I suspect, asked what he thought of software engineering, Dijkstra's answer might have been similar to Gandhi's when asked what he thought of western civilization: "I think it would be a good idea!". I think Dijkstra would have argued that programming requires effective reasoning and the application of computer science, based on mathematics, and would '''not''' have expected that from the "software engineering gurus", who, he might claim, were misusing the term (see also the Dijkstra quote in footnote 20). In other words, I don't think Dijkstra had anything against "software engineering", as he would have wanted the term to be used, but he had something against "software engineering gurus" and against something inaccurately called "software engineering" by others. --] (]) 10:44, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
:It strikes me that '''Software Engineer(ing)''' should be about the ROLE of software creator or the POSITION of a "Software Engineer"; where '''software development''' should be about the PROCESS...maybe? Just seems like we need a much clearer split between IT Roles/Positions and the Processes... really ''throughout'' the Computing category... - ] (]) 01:16, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
::{{reply|Mjquinn id}} We ''just'' merged ] into ]; the talk page section above has the discussion that led to that consensus. -- ] (]) 02:46, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
:::And I believe that it was a mistake. But one that can be corrected. One page should explain the Job (Software Engineer); training, skills, mentality... and one should explain the process (Software Development) life-cycle...all of which is different scope from, but similar separation to ] and ]... You also still have ] hanging around out there. We need to get back to guidelines and those discussions at ]. Maybe even up to ]. My 2c - ] (]) 21:37, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
::::If the above comments are accurate, software engineers don't do software development, they do software engineering. There are also the reasons the articles were merged, namely ease of navigation for the specific questions posed, and the undesirable overlap in content. Is there some reasons those arguments which got consensus above are wrong? -- ] (]) 23:26, 22 September 2021 (UTC)


== The bigger picture == ==The lead section is confusing==
The lead section explains that software engineering is ] What is this supposed to mean? ] (]) 00:31, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
I wonder if the is missing the bigger picture. In the introduction this article mentions the Software development process, but the article itself explains a lot of details about the current situation. It is all well referenced and all. But I keep the feeling this article isn't giving a proper general introduction of the field. It seems to be written for all software engineers to tell them about the current events.


:I dunno, looks like an IP editor garbled it a few months ago. I rephrased based on the cited sources. Better? ] (]) 00:36, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
I think the current article is missing the bigger picture and is at first written for the wrong audience. I think it should at first focuss on all non software engineers. It should at first explain the wifes, childs and school kids about software engineering...!? I have compare this article with the featured ] article, and think that that article is giving much more basic information.
::{{reply to|MrOllie}} Your wording of the text not quite the same as the original wording, which was ] in a previous revision. ] (]) 00:45, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
:::True, but I think it is much closer to the meaning of the citations, particularly the Laplante definition. ] (]) 00:49, 23 April 2022 (UTC)


== Texas Licensing Requirements ==
Now don't get me wrong. I think this article is giving a lot of valuable information. I would like to move most of this info to other data and recreate an article here much more basic, for a larger audience. -- ] (]) 00:12, 20 October 2008 (UTC)


I went looking for citations for the Texas licensing requirements. The best I can find is the law itself (). Sure enough, the term "engineer" is regulated here, in Sec. 1001.301.(b) of the Texas Occupations Code:
:As a start I have moved:
:* The "Ambiguity and controversy" section to ] article.
:* The "Current trends in software engineering" and "Software engineering today" to ]
:I just noticed most of this work seems to be written by one anominous user User around 2004. -- ] (]) 15:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)


{{tq|Except as provided by Subsection (f), a person may not, unless the person holds a license issued under this chapter, directly or indirectly use or cause to be used as a professional, business, or commercial identification, title, name, representation, claim, asset, or means of advantage or benefit any of, or a variation or abbreviation of, the following terms...(1) engineer}}
== A new Software Engineering template ==
:This discussion started on ] and ].
I designed a new ] template here to replace the existing ]. This new template has more possibilities to give a more detailled view on the field. At the moment some of the parts needs some more work, as always.
-- ] (]) 20:15, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
:I disagree that it should replace that template. That template is about a multidisciplinary process that includes software engineering but is not summed up by software engineering. Software engineering describes a skill that evolves much faster than any one process. You are doing both software engineers and those who work with software engineers a disservice by trying to monopolize all the software development terminology under the umbrella of "software engineering." ] (]) 03:04, 21 October 2008 (UTC)


That "except as provided by subsection f" is doing a lot here. Subsection f states, paraphrased, that using "engineer" is allowed by individuals {{tq|exempt from the licensing requirements of this chapter under Sections 1001.057 or 1001.058}} so long as they're not offering professional engineering services to the public or using the title in a context that misrepresents them as a licensed professional engineer. Section 1001.057 states that requirements are waived for {{tq|a private corporation or other business entity, or the activities of the full-time employees or other personnel under the direct supervision and control of the business entity, on or in connection with...activities related only to the research, development, design, fabrication, production, assembly, integration, or service of products manufactured by the entity}}, and goes on to explicitly state {{tq|For purposes of this section, "products manufactured by the entity" also includes computer software, firmware, hardware...}}.
::You opposition makes no sense to me. The new template is based on the statement, that "the software development process is the central issue in software engineer, and software engineering is the main discipline studying the software development process". You keep denying this. Now I told you I could list a dozend Software Engineering introduction books. I will name two:
::* P. Naur and B. Randell, (Eds.). , Scientific Affairs Division, NATO (1969) 231pp :
:::This is this first mayor publications 40 years ago with the central issues: DESIGN, PRODUCTION and SERVICE in the main chapters 4 to 6. Fig 1 on page 11 already gives an overview of the THE SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS PHASE AND FUNCTIONS with Some problems in the production of large-scale software systems.


I am not a lawyer and have no idea if this explicitly allows using the term "software engineer" with no restrictions, however I was unable to find ''any'' source (minus a couple stack exchange posts) claiming it's not allowed, and job listings for Software Engineer positions in Texas mostly do not seem to list professional certification in the requirements. I've erred on removing the claim altogether, since it seems that in practice the term is used in Texas by unlicensed software engineers. If someone else has a better read here or a source more clearly summarizing, feel free to re-add. ] <sup>(] • ])</sup> 21:23, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
::* ] (2007). ''Software Engineering'', 8th ed., Harlow, England: Pearson Education. ,
:::Sommervill explains here:
:::''Software engineering is concerned with theories, methods and tools for professional software development. It is an engineering discipline that is concerned with all aspects of software production. System engineers are involved in system specification, architectural design, integration and deployment.''


==Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Technical Writing==
::Now I can go on and on. But this is not the point. I think in Misplaced Pages the ] articles and the articles about the ] should be better integrated. Keeping two templates here is only confusing. Now there is still a lot of work here:
{{dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment | course = Misplaced Pages:Wiki_Ed/CSU_Los_Angeles/Introduction_to_Technical_Writing_(Fall_2024) | assignments = ] | start_date = 2024-08-13 | end_date = 2024-12-17 }}
::# This article should better express the relation with the ]
::# The previous (good) article here could maybe be recreated in Wikibooks.
::# The two ] and ] should be better integrated
::# The ] or ] can be improved.
::# There is a needs for a better understanding about the Prominent figures in the history of software engineering.
::# There is a need for more illustrations in the software engineering articles
::# And last but not least, the ] template
::The new Software Engineering template is just in first step in improving the field of Software engineering in Misplaced Pages. I would like to go own, and could use some help and feed back. -- ] (]) 12:55, 21 October 2008 (UTC)


<span class="wikied-assignment" style="font-size:85%;">— Assignment last updated by ] (]) 18:54, 27 September 2024 (UTC)</span>
:::You can try to oversimplify it by saying that software engineering is the main discipline. I'm sure there are product developers and project managers that would disagree with you, but that's beside the point. The point is that software development is multidisciplinary. You're trying to pull the disciplines of "software development" that have little to do with engineering under the umbrella of "software engineering" as if those functions are a less important subclass of engineering.

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acqurying for software engineering

I would,like,to know whether software engineering involve studing about science or learning some science subjects like biology ,physics,mathematics or chemistry — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nsereko Hamza (talk • contribs) 10:55, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

@Nsereko Hamza: Arguably, mathematics is not a science, but some math knowledge is definitely required to be a professional software engineer. You might consider that computer programming is in general just a form of applied mathematics. Not all advanced math is needed, and there is some math specific to computer science like Big O notation. I think whether or not you need to study sciences like biology, chemistry, and physics depends on whether you get a certification or an undergraduate degree, and where from. For example, MIT requires all undergraduates to pass classes in all three of those subjects, no matter what their major. I don't think liberal arts colleges have the same science requirements, and certainly not if you are doing a non-college software engineering certification or boot camp. I'm not sure to what degree this should be explained in the article; would other readers benefit from mentioning any of that? -- Beland (talk) 03:05, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Merge from Software engineer

Software engineer#Education and Software engineer#Profession entirely overlap the sections of this article with the same names. The remaining section of Software engineer#Use of the title "Engineer" entirely overlaps with Software engineering professionalism and should be merged there. If we want to keep the engineering field and the profession separate, then I'd merge into Programmer due to use of that term as a synonym and substantial overlap when it's used with a different meaning; see Programmer#Terminology. -- Beland (talk) 02:19, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@Johnnie Bob: You mentioned you have some thoughts on this merge proposal? -- Beland (talk) 07:36, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
@Beland: I don't think there is any rule against both article having some duplicated content. I just think that the reader would like to see what a software engineer article is as opposed to going through a software engineering article to look for it, which may be wee bit more forbidding. I don't know how many viewers the article its gets, but certainly it is probable more value at the moment, for the reader. Programmer was a term that was really common when I started writing software in the 90's. It was quite a common occurence, but now you barely hear it, except in the sense of looking back, and affirming something that was good and true. Is there a stand-out benefit to combining them? scope_creep 19:18, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
@Scope creep: I added templates to the talk pages showing daily pageview charts. It looks like Software engineer gets about 600 views per day and Software engineering gets about 1100. (Programmer is getting about 1300 per day after the merge from software developer.) I think occupation/activity articles are usually combined because they are two aspects of the same subject, it's easier for readers to navigate fewer articles, and better context can be provided in a single article. For example,keeping two articles means that if your question is "What is it that software engineers do?" if you go to the software engineer article, you won't find the answer there. If your question is, "Are there degree requirements for software engineering?" and you go to the software engineering article, you won't find the answer there. (And actually that summarizes yet a third article which has more detail on that topic.) In each case, you'd need to discover there's a different article, in such a way that it occurs to you that this specific article (and not one of the many other articles we've linked) might have the answer to your question.
Peeking at WP:MERGEREASON, both duplicate content and significantly overlapping content have consensus as good reasons to merge articles. It definitely reduces the workload of article maintenance and improves quality if details are only presented once, and other articles only have summaries. -- Beland (talk) 22:45, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
Hi @Beland:. I tried to come up something last night. I was trying to find some research to support keeping them seperate articles but couldn't see much. Yip, it's pretty cogent argument for merging. Certainly, regarding the size of the project, finding the right information is getting harder and harder, as more articles are created. The removal of those Wikiprojects last year, that could have been used as starting entry points for searches, I thought was misplaced. So from that aspect, if it makes it easier to find info on it, then it is probably better to merge. scope_creep 10:23, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
OK, I'll start in on it. -- Beland (talk) 19:34, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Merge complete! -- Beland (talk) 07:19, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Possible merge with software development

@Beland: Just read through the software development article and had a glance at this software engineering article. I'm considering the possibility of merging these two articles together. There seems to be a decent amount of overlap between them, and from my understanding, the names "software developer" and "software engineering" are used interchangeably in terms of job titles. The name of the merged article should probably remain "software development" since that seems to be the more widely used title out of the two (I may be wrong though). Thoughts? Aitch & Aitch Aitch (talk) 20:43, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Aitch & Aitch Aitch, they are not quite the same thing and you are proposing removing Software Engineering as a topic from Misplaced Pages, leaving only a redirect. Both articles, and the related software development process have grown through accretion by editors adding textbook topics. Software engineering's focus on the management of large projects has gotten lost. There is also confusion because business-oriented technology and programming is taught in busiess information technology departments in universities and computer science is taught in technical and engineering departments. Both talk about software development, and the ideas of software engineering are moving from technology companies to other businesses. It would be nice if Misplaced Pages articles made sense of this, but eliminating Software Engineering is not the way to do it. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:41, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
@Aitch & Aitch Aitch: I think merging would be an improvement. We can certainly find sources that say "software developer" and "software engineer" are used interchangably, and also that some organizations do make a distinction. (See Programmer#Terminology.) The "software engineering" article currently uses "software development" to describe the task more unambiguously called software construction. The "software development" article covers the broad array of tasks and treats "software development" and "software engineering" as synonyms, which is what makes them mergeable.
@StarryGrandma: Merging the articles isn't "eliminating Software Engineering" from Misplaced Pages. The resulting merged article should discuss the specific techniques and considerations some people mean when they say "software engineering", and link to the article on professional aspects of software engineering. I don't see a bright line between "engineering" techniques and "software development methodologies", though - they both encompass pre-coding design, and post-coding testing, maintenance, etc. And they both include the management of projects large and small. So I'm having trouble imagining how to exclude "engineering" from an overview of "software development" in the broad sense. The other way around would also be difficult...we might try to scope for example, Agile software development to cover the social aspects of project management with something to say about testing tools, but the "software engineering" part of Agile is only the actual programming and testing. But that's the opposite of the claim that software development is narrow and software engineering includes all the project management extras. People just use both terms in both broad and narrow senses. -- Beland (talk) 01:23, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
@Beland: @StarryGrandma: Yeah I wasn't suggesting removing software engineering as a topic, I was suggesting merging the two articles together into one concise article since there seems to be a lot of overlap between the two. I'm not particularly an expert at this so I don't really know where to start. I was thinking that the current individual articles should be cleaned up a little before the merge since there is some vague wording and unsourced claims on both articles. Aitch & Aitch Aitch (talk) 20:14, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Beland and Aitch & Aitch Aitch: have not run into another discussion here where I have been at loss for words, but this one has done it. I admit to a few days of being completely speechless. Now I will try to explain without this turning into an academic lecture on the topic. You are proposing blanking the article on the area of software research in which I earned my masters degree in computer science and turning it into a few paragraphs in the software development article.

Software engineering is not another word for software development. It is one particular approach to software development, with an emphasis on quality. This was driven initially by government and military concerns in the US and Europe about the poor state of the products they were being delivered from large-scale, expensive projects. The Department of Defense has funded much of the research in this area and even had a computer language created. Most software development is not done in this way. Technical companies started calling their developers software engineers and more recently people have been referring to software development in some areas as software engineering. But the article is about the topic of software engineering whose history is given at History of software engineering.

The confusion between software engineering and software development is also understandable because the article contains so little information about the field of software engineering. The article is one of the oldest in Misplaced Pages. It predates the current database so we don't have the oldest edits. The earliest one we have is 14 November 2001 (and it removes most of the article with the comment "minor copyediting"). There have been 5194 edits since. Sometimes the article has had content about the actual topic of software engineering, as it did early on; sometimes it was mostly about other things. Most SE related stuff is no longer in it or was never in it. Early edits happened before sources were required for material which was available in textbook. Much of the editing seems to have been from students adding textbook-type material rather than from scholarly or technical sources.

Universities encourage a careful approach to writing software by trying to influence students. There are two paths to becoming a computer programmer at a level above just writing code. (You can get 2-year degrees in software development at community colleges.) If you want to work for technical companies you take courses in computer science. The course that introduces the full range of software development is called Software Engineering and is taught using one of the textbooks titled Software Engineering. If you are interested in business computing you take courses in information technology. In IT the course that introduces the full range of software development is called Systems Analysis and Design and is taught from one of the textbooks with the same name. Systems Analysis and Design is business computing's approach to development that emphasizes quality. (Misplaced Pages doesn't have an article on this and it should. It's history and development is also very interesting.) See the tables of contents and introductions at

Note that the descriptions of software development are different in the two books.

What really matters is not what students learn but how the companies they will work for approach software development. One of the developments in software engineering was a mechanism for customers to be assured that the software they contract for will be developed using the these methods. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University, funded by the Department of Defense, developed Capability Maturity Models which assessed a company's software development process. Government contracts required meeting a certain level, and other companies required that their suppliers meet certain levels. Whether that was at all successful is unclear, and the SEI no longer does the assessments.

Software Engineering is a large enough topic with a 50 year history and can't be summed up concisely in the article on software development. That article is already written in summary style with sections having main articles of their own anyway. A major topic in computing meets Misplaced Pages's requirements for having an article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by StarryGrandma (talk • contribs) 21:54, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@StarryGrandma: Thanks for the info. Based on what you've said, I can see that keeping the two articles separate is the best decision. I think the core problem is that the articles need to be brought to a higher standard. The "software development" article seems to be in better shape overall but its opening paragraphs (among other parts) are in poor condition. The "software engineering" article needs a lot more work since there are chunks of completely unsourced content. As for the "history of software engineering" article, I would support the idea of it being merged with the "software engineering" article. Starry Grandma, you clearly have a lot more knowledge than me on these topics so I'll ask you if merging "software engineering" with "history of software engineering" is a good idea. All I know for sure is that all three of these articles need a lot of improvement. Aitch & Aitch Aitch (talk) 13:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
@StarryGrandma: What would you consider the correct fix to Template:Software development process? Would "Software engineering" move to the "Paradigms and models" section? Would the first section title then just be "Core activities" implying they could belong to any approach to software development? -- Beland (talk) 03:04, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
Beland, setting the first section title back to "Core activities" is good. Put Software engineering at the top of the of the "Paradigms and models" section. Most of the topics in that section are also part of current software engineering. If Systems analysis and design ever turns into a real article covering this it can go there too. StarryGrandma (talk) 23:11, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
OK, I made that change to the template. I also added a note to the intro of Software development saying software engineering is one approach. I downloaded the SWEBOK and found it likewise uses "software construction" where software engineering was using "software development". The SWEBOK considers "software development" to be the whole process, as you do. I aligned the article with the source, so that should fix the long-standing confusion of why both of them seemed to include the other.
In my professional experience, it's not necessary to get a 2-year or 4-year or master's degree to get a computer engineering job. I've met people in those jobs who have physics degrees, who got a humanities degree and went to a programming bootcamp. One of my co-workers who never graduated high school and never went to college was self-taught, and she knew more and was a better engineer than the Tufts and MIT grads. I took Software Engineering at MIT from Barbara Liskov, and her book doesn't have "software engineering" in the title.
I'm not sure there really is a difference between good software development techniques and good software engineering techniques other than branding, as the SWEBOK includes multiple programming methodologies that both were and weren't taught at school, some of which just seem to come from best commercial practices. "Systems analysis and design" looks like a classic "waterfall" style process, but SWEBOK, for example, covers waterfall, agile, TDD, and other approaches. Waterfall model might be a good place to describe SAD if you think it's a noteworthy variant.
If you have specific topics you would like to see added to the software engineering article, that would be more actionable than describing its 20-year history. We might already cover the desired topics in other articles; I'm happy to see what we have and what's missing. -- Beland (talk) 00:40, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Role vs. process

It strikes me that Software Engineer(ing) should be about the ROLE of software creator or the POSITION of a "Software Engineer"; where software development should be about the PROCESS...maybe? Just seems like we need a much clearer split between IT Roles/Positions and the Processes... really throughout the Computing category... - Mjquinn_id (talk) 01:16, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
@Mjquinn id: We just merged Software engineer into Software engineering; the talk page section above has the discussion that led to that consensus. -- Beland (talk) 02:46, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
And I believe that it was a mistake. But one that can be corrected. One page should explain the Job (Software Engineer); training, skills, mentality... and one should explain the process (Software Development) life-cycle...all of which is different scope from, but similar separation to System integration and Systems integrator... You also still have Software development process hanging around out there. We need to get back to guidelines and those discussions at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Software. Maybe even up to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Computer science. My 2c - Mjquinn_id (talk) 21:37, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
If the above comments are accurate, software engineers don't do software development, they do software engineering. There are also the reasons the articles were merged, namely ease of navigation for the specific questions posed, and the undesirable overlap in content. Is there some reasons those arguments which got consensus above are wrong? -- Beland (talk) 23:26, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The lead section is confusing

The lead section explains that software engineering is "an engineering approach on a software development of systematics application." What is this supposed to mean? Jarble (talk) 00:31, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

I dunno, looks like an IP editor garbled it a few months ago. I rephrased based on the cited sources. Better? MrOllie (talk) 00:36, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
@MrOllie: Your wording of the text not quite the same as the original wording, which was confusingly paraphrased in a previous revision. Jarble (talk) 00:45, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
True, but I think it is much closer to the meaning of the citations, particularly the Laplante definition. MrOllie (talk) 00:49, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Texas Licensing Requirements

I went looking for citations for the Texas licensing requirements. The best I can find is the law itself (). Sure enough, the term "engineer" is regulated here, in Sec. 1001.301.(b) of the Texas Occupations Code:

Except as provided by Subsection (f), a person may not, unless the person holds a license issued under this chapter, directly or indirectly use or cause to be used as a professional, business, or commercial identification, title, name, representation, claim, asset, or means of advantage or benefit any of, or a variation or abbreviation of, the following terms...(1) engineer

That "except as provided by subsection f" is doing a lot here. Subsection f states, paraphrased, that using "engineer" is allowed by individuals exempt from the licensing requirements of this chapter under Sections 1001.057 or 1001.058 so long as they're not offering professional engineering services to the public or using the title in a context that misrepresents them as a licensed professional engineer. Section 1001.057 states that requirements are waived for a private corporation or other business entity, or the activities of the full-time employees or other personnel under the direct supervision and control of the business entity, on or in connection with...activities related only to the research, development, design, fabrication, production, assembly, integration, or service of products manufactured by the entity, and goes on to explicitly state For purposes of this section, "products manufactured by the entity" also includes computer software, firmware, hardware....

I am not a lawyer and have no idea if this explicitly allows using the term "software engineer" with no restrictions, however I was unable to find any source (minus a couple stack exchange posts) claiming it's not allowed, and job listings for Software Engineer positions in Texas mostly do not seem to list professional certification in the requirements. I've erred on removing the claim altogether, since it seems that in practice the term is used in Texas by unlicensed software engineers. If someone else has a better read here or a source more clearly summarizing, feel free to re-add. Dylnuge 21:23, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Technical Writing

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 August 2024 and 17 December 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Javier0192 (article contribs).

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