Software Engineering

Chapter 1 – Software and Software Engineering

Overview

• Software is designed and built by software engineers.

• Software is used by virtually everyone in society.

• Software is pervasive in our commerce, our culture, and our everyday lives.

• Software engineers have a moral obligation to build reliable software that does no harm to other people.

• Software engineers view computer software, as being made up of the programs, documents, and data required to design and build the system.

• Software users are only concerned with whether or not software products meet their expectations and make their tasks easier to complete.

Important Questions for Software Engineers

• Why does it take so long to get software finished?

• Why are development costs so high?

• Why can’t we find all errors before we give the software to our customers?

• Why do we spend so much time and effort maintaining existing programs?

• Why do we continue to have difficulty in measuring progress as software is being developed?

Software

• Software is both a product and a vehicle for delivering a product (information).

• Software is engineered not manufactured.

• Software does not wear out, but it does deteriorate.

• Industry is moving toward component-based software construction, but most software is still custom-built.

Software Application Domains

• System software

• Application software

• Engineering or Scientific Software

• Embedded software

• Product-line software (includes entertainment software)

• Web-Applications

• Artificial intelligence software

New Software Challenges

• Open-world computing

o Creating software to allow machines of all sizes to communicate with each other across vast networks

• Netsourcing

o Architecting simple and sophisticated applications that benefit targeted end-user markets worldwide

• Open Source

o Distributing source code for computing applications so customers can...