This is going to be a short entry, given the nature of the topic and that many of this ideas will be talked about in future articles.
It is called “engineering” because early practitioners wanted to call it “software physics,” but that term was already in use. They wanted to call it software physics because they believed that the process of producing software could be formalized with such rigor that it would be on all fours with physics. Indeed, texts from the ’80s are populated with theories, derivations, tables, graphs, equations and formulae, apparently in an attempt to appear mathematical and scientific in nature (Curran, B. 2001).
Software engineering milestones:
- 1960’s – Software crysis: software was developed in a poor way, mainly in languages such as Fortran and Cobol. And, as the power of hardware became better, more complex programs were required.
- 1980’s – OOP: the magic starts. With OOP, programmers were able to write more readable and changes-friendly code as well as GUIs.
- 1990’s – Internet & HTML: With this, software began being uploaded. And with this, free software was born.
- Today – Cloud computing and IoT are just some of the few technologies in the 201o’s.
Sources:
- Curran, B. (October, 2001). What is Software Engineering?. Ubiquity. Read at: http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=763745
- https://www.vikingcodeschool.com/software-engineering-basics/a-brief-history-of-software-engineering
