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From: "Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-93" <condicma@PWFL.COM>
Subject: Re: Software Engineering and Dreamers
Date: 1997/05/28
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Date: 1997-05-28T00:00:00+00:00
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Kaz Kylheku <kaz@VISION.CREST.NT.COM> writes:
>Examples: writing software is not engineering, and the result is not
>technology, because principles of physics are not required to understand the
>internal semantics of software systems. Designing a pure logic circuit isn't
>engineering either, except when you have to solve implementation problems
>related to heat dissipation, capacitive or inductive coupling and other
>artifacts related to the _technology_.
>
    I'd have to disagree on some points here: Writing software may not
    be engineering, but engineering can involve writing software.
    Engineering does not require the application of physics - it
    requires the application of rules. Consider the spectrum: Art,
    Craft, Engineering, Science. Art is where software used to be 20
    years ago where some highly talented people just seemed to do it
    right. Craft got introduced as the experience base was built,
    research was done etc. Some standard "tricks of the trade" (like
    structured programming, data structures, etc.) got introduced and
    you had a "craft." Engineering has built on those "tricks of the
    trade" and started to produce much more formalized rules for the
    development of software. I'm not sure we're entirely there yet,
    but we've at least started the task. The "Science" part would come
    about when we've taken the formalized rules and established them
    as principles that can be verified by measurement and experiment.
    (Sort of going from "it always works that way - trust me" to "it
    works that way because of X and I can show you by the following
    experiment..."

    As for the "technology" debate - consider that the "ology" part
    means "study" and you can see that the word is about the study of
    technique. Anybody who has a technique for doing something which
    is studied and understood is in possession of a technology. I can
    have a technology for building obsidian tipped spears or a
    technology for building silicon transistors or a technology for
    building database software. Technology itself doesn't imply
    physics.

    I think it may have been Heisenberg who said "all science is
    either physics or it's stamp collecting". Perhaps that puts
    "Computer Science" in the stamp collecting mode, but no less so
    than Botany. That doesn't mean it can't be a "science"

    Just my 2p

    MDC

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        561.796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Fax:        561.796.4669
West Palm Beach, FL                             Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
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