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From: joannz@halley.UUCP (Joann Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Information Systems is an Engineering Discipline
Message-ID: <592@halley.UUCP>
Date: 25 Sep 89 23:13:08 GMT
References: <10743@dasys1.UUCP> <34348@regenmeister.uucp>
Distribution: comp.edu
Organization: Tandem Computers, Austin, TX
Lines: 25

In article <34348@regenmeister.uucp>, chrisp@regenmeister.uucp (Chris Prael) writes:
> I suggest that you earn a little bit about the histories of electrical,
> electronic, mechanical, civil, chemical, aeronautical, and automotive
> engineering.  The biggest difference between those fields and computing
> is that no where near as many technicians managed to pretend that they
> were engineers in any of those fields as have done so in computing.


One other very noticeable difference between other engineering fields and
computing is in the amount of failure analysis to be found in the field. Did
anybody reading this EVER take a course in failure analysis of software? In
fact, where's the literature on this? There's all sorts of stuff on how
bridges fail, and why buildings do/don't stand up, but there seems to be no
real ability to analyze the stress on a software module, or the failure rate
of software components. All I've ever seen is the anecdotal evidence
(comp.risks and the like) and various platitudes about a quality development
process producing quality software. How would we go about developing this
into a real engineering discipline?


-- 
"Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a a newer world - "

Joann Zimmerman            Tandem Computers        Austin, TX 
...!{rutgers,harvard,gatech,uunet}!cs.texas.edu!halley!joannz