A Missing Element In Software Engineering Education

Abstract

A system to be developed can be regarded as a machine in an environment. Software engineering is surely concerned with the machine - the computer and its programs. Is it also concerned with the environment? If so, to what extent and in what way? And, is this concern with the system’s environment merely a collection of disparate specialized applications such as banking, switching, or avionics? Or does it have important aspects that transcend individual applications? This talk argues that there are such transcendent aspects, and that we have paid too little attention to them. They center on the problems of formalizing the informal real world. The need for formalization merits a discipline in its own right. Elements of such a discipline are sketched, and it is claimed that this discipline must be an integral part of a full software engineering education.