
Software Engineering – An Unconsummated Marriage (1998, Parnas) - gsylvie
http://bit-booster.com/parnas-19981208.html
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hilbert42
There's nothing new here (trouble is nothing has been about it):

"TRENDS IN COMPUTING by W. Wayt Gibbs, staff writer. Scientific American;
September 1994; Page 86 : Despite 50 years of progress, the software industry
remains years-perhaps decades-short of the mature engineering discipline
needed to meet the demands of an information-age society."

[http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/SWE/Papers/SciAmGibbs/...](http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/SWE/Papers/SciAmGibbs/SciAmGibbs.html)

The question is why.

Actually, W. Wayt Gibbs answers the question. Essentially, programmers do not
treat programming with the same level of discipline and responsibility as
engineers do in other engineering professions (like say bridge building where
people's lives are at stake). Programmers essentially consider themselves as
artists and thus they program in undisciplined ways. (A software engineering
profession won't evolve until the software industry takes itself seriously as
do other professions).

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gsylvie
Sorry for the weird format. I grabbed it from here:

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/software/1998/parnas-19981208...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/software/1998/parnas-19981208.ps.Z)

I then ran it through "uncompress" and "ps2pdf" and then finally "pdf2html".

