Congratulation to this board!

I have discussed with some ones here about software process, which is one important part in software engineering. I'm currently Ph.D. student, and focus on software process improvement during distributed software development.

I restart this thread here, hope this could give others some chance to learn about Software Engineering, or sharing the knowledge about Software Engineering here.

What exactly do you mean with this thread?

interesting...
kindly discuss why software engineering exist? even though a programmer can do this task?

[Purpose of this thread]
Yeah, at first we may discuss the foundation of Software Engineering: the goal of SE (why comes SE), the history of SE, the future of SE.

Then we may discuss further into SE including the subdomains in SE. Of course, we need to choose the most interesting parts.

Besides, we may question and make deeply discussion about every aspects of SE.


It's a good question that I have never thought about. The following is my own opinion, we may discuss it further.

Though software engineering makes the simple programming tasks complex by applying some standards, the importance and benefit of software engineering increase when the size of project or the complexity of tasks increase.

A programmer estimate the effort of a task with the experience, it will do without considering software engineering if the schedule and cost is not important or he/she is very family with the task. Otherwise, the dependence of task, the possibility of requirement change (including the environment change), and some other issues should be double checked. Anyway, if he/she always think about these issues, he/she is on the way of using software engineering.

[Origins of software engineering]
The term software engineering first was used around 1960 as researchers, management, and practitioners tried to improve software development practice.

The NATO Science Committee sponsored two conferences on software engineering in 1968 (Garmisch, Germany) and 1969, which gave the field its initial boost. Many consider these conferences to be the start of the field.

Software engineering arose out of the so called software crisis of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when many software projects had bad endings. Many software projects ran over budget and schedule. Some projects caused property damage. A few projects caused loss of life. As software becomes more pervasive, we all recognize the need for better software. The software crisis was originally defined in terms of productivity, but evolved to emphasize quality.

thnx for the answer

um... can you disscuss more about SE? what you study? what is the main prog languages do you use? and more about it, please



- i'm enlighten

more new for software engineering

www.software-engin.com

Yeah, that's a good book. However, I don't think the URLs of software engineering are very helpful for programmers. It's important for us to learn with less time as we are all busy. So my opinion of this thread is to share and discuss the most interesting issues of SE here, the content is suggested to be concise. Good bookviews are also welcome here.


Currently I do some research on global cooperative software development, which includes "requirement transfer", "task allocation", etc. I'm family with C++(3+ years experience), and had used Powerbuilder (from Sybase Corp.) for 4+ years.

I'm busy with my dissertation these days, hope to finish it by the yearend. So I could only paste some interesting material here now. I don't know if the people here want to know something about the Extreme Programming (XP). If so, I will introduce it here in the near future.

You mean OO foundations and such. Standardised development sollutions like Singulars etc? That's very interesting. I'm studying Java at the moment and I'd love to learn more about it. I've got a course concearning this. We'll be learning XP soon and many more.

Please do explain how XP works, as I would love to hear as many angles towards it as possible

Sorry that I could not have enough time to have a really good post now. However I must response so as to make clear something about programming and software engineering.

Software Engineering belongs to computer science, it should embrace the currently available good practice in programming domain, such as OO, prototype based programming, Aspect -Oriented Programming, built-in-test, software reuse and so on.


Regarding Extreme Programming or XP, I will introduce something like "feedback", "human oriented development", and so on.

----Feedback--- simple background
Most of the time, we develop a software product for customer. (Of course, we may develop for ourselves, or just want to learn something. ) The response from customers is very important for us. User acceptance test (UAT) will be conducted by customer to ensure that software product meet their need. Developers need to fix the bug, change the design and code if there is some error. However, there is time and budget limitation in software projects, it is important to schedule the feedback of customer so as to reduce the risks involved. XP has some best practice to do so.

----human oriented development--- simple background
Scope, Time, Human resource are the most important three factors in software projects. Normally processes focus to finish the tasks( defined by scope) and schedule the human resource as needed. XP focus to enable everyone contribute their best to the project and adjust the tasks involved.

How about these two topics?
If they are interesting, I will talk about them after my dissertation protecting.