Analisis

Software Engineering—A New Profession
Julius T. Tou
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA

Throughout history engineering has continually interacted with the rest of human society in ahighly determinative and influential way. It has largely freed man from physical drudgery and from the slavery of routine mental tasks. It has provided the tools of new scientific discovery as well asthose of new creative art. It has provided the means of bringing to mankind the results of the creative efforts of the great artists, writers, scientists, and philosophers of both ancient and moderntimes. It has provided the facilities for man to communicate with his fellowmen throughout the world. It has placed men on the moon, and is now concerned with the problem of information explosion. Theengineer continually seeks new imaginative solutions to many of the very real problems that confront mankind. During the last decade, engineering has undergone a continuous transition from the practicalto the theoretical. This change had made technology overlap with science. Engineering education today is quite different from engineering education twenty years ago; it bears little resemblance toengineer­ ing education at the turn of this century. Perhaps we shall not be able to recognize engineering by the year 2000. Old branches are either updated or phased out, and new branches are created outof necessity. The newest offspring is software engineering which is the theme of this volume. For decades engineering drawing was a subject required by all engineering colleges. Today, it is beingreplaced in many schools by digital computation and programming as a basic requirement. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, engineering was nothing more than civil engineering andmechanical engineering. The need for the generation and utilization of electrical energy created electrical engineering as a profession at the turn of this century. Years later chemical engineering spun off...