Fields
Software Engineering
Also Known As SWE Common industry abbreviation, as in job titles such as "SWE II".
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Software engineering is the branch of engineering concerned with the systematic design, development, testing and maintenance of computer software, applying engineering discipline such as specification, design review, testing and version control to a medium that has no physical mass and can be copied without cost. The term and the formal discipline date to the late 1960s, when the growing size and unreliability of software systems prompted engineers to argue that writing software needed the same rigor as building a bridge.
Facts
Origin YearThe term software engineering was coined for the 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference in Garmisch, West Germany. Core ConcernThe systematic design, development and maintenance of computer software. 1 Core PrincipleThe IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology defines the field by its discipline: the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation and maintenance of software, treating programming as an engineering practice rather than a craft. 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Computer engineering and software engineering meet at firmware and low-level system software.
Robot behavior, perception and control depend on software running on embedded systems.
Includes
Ada Lovelace, Engineers Software engineering did not exist as a named discipline in her lifetime. She is linked here as the field own recognized precursor, for Note G and its accompanying description of a machine that manipulates symbols by rule.
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
2. Software Engineering (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationTerminology, Definition sectionQuote, Terminology, Definition section
The application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software.
2. Software Engineering (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationLead section, opening definition of software engineeringQuote, Lead section, opening definition of software engineering
Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications.
Technology: A World History
Daniel R. Headrick, Oxford University Press, 2009Includes: The Internet
Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age
Kurt W. Beyer, MIT Press, 2009Includes: Grace Hopper
Adas Algorithm: How Lord Byrons Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age
James Essinger, Melville House, 2014Includes: Ada Lovelace
A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954Includes: Vint Cerf
A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954Includes: Bob Kahn
Agricultural Engineering (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Agricultural Engineering, Lead sectionView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.