Software Engineering Is Engineering

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CACM Staff

January 1, 2012

I was confounded by the conclusion of Michael Davis's Viewpoint "Will Software Engineering Ever Be Engineering?" (Nov. 2011), mainly because anything I can do in code I can also do in digital hardware, analog hardware, fluidics, even gears and motors.

GM Samaras' comments about software engineering are wrong. It is about time we stopped thinking of program development as engineering. There are too many differences. You may as well call medical practitioners engineers. They engineer the body don't they? His remark that programming is just technical in the sense of soldering is not just wrong, but offensive. Where engineering has appropriate techniques to software that is good, but there are too many techniques that are inappropriatly applied to software and these destroy projects. We must develop our own profession.

I.joyner@acm.org

— The account that made this comment no longer exists., January 9, 2012

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Software Engineering Is Engineering

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