List of software engineering topics
This list complements the software engineering article, giving more details and examples.
Influence on society
Software engineers affect society by creating applications. These applications produce value for users, and sometimes produce disasters.
Applications
Software engineers build applications that people use. Applications influence software engineering by pressuring developers to solve problems in new ways. For example, consumer software emphasizes low cost, medical software emphasizes high quality, and Internet commerce software emphasizes rapid development. Business software*Accounting softwareAnalytics*Data mining closely related to database*Decision support systemsAirline reservationsBanking*Automatic teller machiness*Check processing*Credit cardsCommerce*Trade*Auctions (EBay)*Reverse auctions*Bar code scannersCompilers*Parsers*Optimizerss*Interpreterss*Linkers*LoaderssCommunication*Email*Instant messengers*VOIP*Calendars - scheduling and coordinating*Contact managersComputer graphics*Animation*Special effects for video and film*Editing*Post-processingCryptographyDatabases, support almost every fieldEmbedded systems Both software engineers and traditional engineers write software control systems for embedded products. *Automotive software*Avionics software*Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) software*Medical device software*Telephony*TelemetryEngineering All traditional engineering branches use software extensively. Engineers use spreadsheets, more than they ever used calculators. Engineers use custom software tools to design, analyze, and simulate their own projects, like bridges and power lines. These projects resemble software in many respects, because the work exists as electronic documents and goes through analysis, design, implementation, and testing phases. Software tools for engineers use the tenets of computer science; as well as the tenets of calculus, physics, and chemistry.*Computer Aided Design (CAD)*Electronic Design Automation (EDA)*Numerical Analysis*SimulationFile*FTP*File sharingFinance*Bond market*Futures market*Stock marketGames*Poker*Multiuser Dungeons*Video gamesInformation systems, support almost every field*LIS Management of laboratory data*MIS Management of financial and personnel dataLogistics*Supply chain managementManufacturing*Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM)*Distributed Control Systems (DCS)Music*Music sequencers*Sound effects*Music synthesisNetworks and Internet*Domain Name System*Protocols*RoutersOffice suites*Word processors*Spreadsheets*PresentationsOperating systems*Embedded*Graphical*Multitasking*Real-timeRoboticsSignal analysis*Image processing, encoding and interpreting visual information*Signal processing, encoding and interpreting signals*Speech processing*Text recognition*Handwriting recognitionSimulation, supports almost every field.*Engineering, A software simulation can be cheaper to build and more flexible to change than a physical engineering model.*SciencesSciences*GenomicsTraffic Control*Air traffic control*Ship traffic control*Automotive traffic controlTraining*Drill*Simulation*TestingVisualization, supports almost every field*Architecture*Engineering*SciencesVotingWorld wide web*Browsers*Servers
Disasters
Software has played a role in many high-profile disasters. - Ariane 5 Flight 501
- Mars probes
- Denver International Airport
- TAURUS - UK share settlement system and dematerialised central share depository.
- Therac-25 - A radiation therapy machine responsible for six overdoses due to faulty software.
Technologies and practices
Skilled software engineers use technologies and practices from a variety of fields to improve their productivity in creating software and to improve the quality of the delivered product.
Software engineering topics
Many technologies and practices are (mostly) unique to software engineering,
though many of these are shared with computer science.
- List of programming languages
- Scripting
- Cobol
- C
- C++
- C#
- Fortran
- Java
- Perl
- PHP
- Python
- Tcl
- Visual Basic
Programming paradigm, based on a programming language technology - Aspect-oriented programming
- Functional decomposition
- Object-oriented programming
- Post-object programming
- Structured programming
- Hierarchical
- Object
- Relational
- SQL/XML
- SQL
Qt toolkit
- Configuration management and source code management
- *CVS
- *Subversion
- *Make
- *Yacc/Bison
- *RCS
- *GNU Arch
- Editors
- *IDEss
- *text editors
- *word processors
- Software componentry
Design languages - UML
Patterns, document many common programming and project management techniques - Anti-patterns
- Patterns
- Agile
- *Agile software development
- *Crystal
- *Extreme programming
- *Lean software development
- *Scrum (in management)
- Heavyweight
- *Cleanroom
- *ISO 12207 — software life cycle processes
- *ISO 9000 and ISO 9001
- *Rational Unified Process
- Process evaluation frameworks
- *CMM and CMMI
- *ISO 15504 (SPICE)
A platform combines computer hardware and an operating system. As platforms become more powerful and less expensive, applications and tools become more widely available. - BREW
- Cray supercomputers
- DEC minicomputers
- IBM mainframes
- Linux PCs
- Mac OS and Mac OS X PCs
- Microsoft .NET network software platform
- Palm PDAs
- Sun Microsystems Solaris
- Windows PCs (Wintel)
Other Practices - Communication
- Pair programming
- Refactoring
- Software inspections/Code reviews
- Software reuse
- Systems integration
- Teamwork
Other tools - Decision tables
- Features
- Story
- Use cases
Computer science topics
Skilled software engineers know a lot of computer science including what is possible and impossible, and what is easy and hard for software. - Algorithms, well-defined methods for solving specific problems.
- *Searching
- *Sorting
- *Parsing
- *Numerical analysis
- Data structures, well-defined methods for storing and retrieving data.
- *Lists
- *Trees
- *Hash tables
- Computability, some problems cannot be solved at all
- *Halting problem
- Complexity, some problems are solvable in principle, yet unsolvable in practice
- *NP completeness
- *Computational complexity theory
- Formal methods
- *Proof of correctness
- *Program synthesis
Mathematics topics
Discrete mathematics is a key foundation of software engineering. - Number representation
- Sets
- Bagss
- Graphs
- *Sequences
- *Trees
- *Graphs
- Logic
- *Deduction
- *First-order logic
- *Higher-order logic
- *Combinatory logic
- Induction
- Combinatorics
Other Domain knowledgeStatisticsDecision theoryType theory
Life cycle phasesDevelopment life cycle phase*Requirements gathering*Requirements analysis*Software architecture*Computer programming*Testing, detects bugs**Black box testing**White box testing**Clear box testing*Quality assurance, ensures compliance with process.Product Life cycle phase and Project lifecycle*Inception*First development*Major release*Minor release*Bug fix release*Maintenance*ObsolesenceRelease development stage, near the end of a release cycle*Alpha*Beta*Gold master*1.0Software development lifecycle*Waterfall model - Structured programming and Stepwise refinement*SSADM*Spiral model - Iterative development*DSDM*Chaos model - Chaos strategy
Deliverables
Deliverables must be developed for many SE projects. Software engineers rarely make all of these deliverables themselves. They usually cooperate with the writers, trainers, installers, marketers, technical support people, and others who make many of these deliverables. - Application - the software
- Database - schemas and data.
- Documentation, online and/or print, FAQ, Readme, release notes, Help, for each role
- *User
- *Administrator
- *Manager
- *Buyer
- Administration and Maintenance policy, what should be backed-up, checked, configured, ...
- Installers
- Migration
- *Upgrade from previous installations
- *Upgrade from competitor's installations
- Training materials, for each role
- *User
- *Administrator
- *Manager
- *Buyer
- Support info for computer support groups.
- Marketing and sales materials
- *White papers, explain the technologies used in the applications
- *Comparisons with competitor products
Business roles - Operations
- *Users
- *Administrators
- *Managers
- *Buyers
- Development
- *Analysts
- *Programmers
- *Testers
- *Managers
- Business
- *Consulting - customization and installation of applications
- *Sales
- *Marketing
- *Legal - contracts, intellectual property rights
- *Support - helping customers use applications
- *Personnel - hiring and training qualified personnel
- *Finance - funding new development
- Academe
- *Educators
- *Researchers
Management topics - Leadership
- *Coaching
- *Communication, SEs easily ignore this
- *Listening
- *Motivation
- *Vision, SEs are good at this
- *Example, everyone follows a good example best
- Personnel management
- *Hiring, getting people into an organization
- *Staffing, getting people onto a project
- *Training
- *Evaluation
- Project management
- *Goal setting
- *Customer interaction (Rethink)
- *Estimation
- *Risk management
- *Change management
- Process management
- *Processes
- **Software development processes
- **Methodologies
- *Metrics
Business topics - Quality programs
- *Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
- *Six Sigma
- *Total Quality Management (TQM)
Community topics
Pioneers
Many people made important contributions to SE technologies, practices, or applications. - John Backus: Fortran, first optimizing compiler, BNF
- Vic Basili: Experience factory.
- Kent Beck: Refactoring, extreme programming, pair programming, test-driven development.
- Tim Berners-Lee: World wide web
- Barry Boehm: SE economics, COCOMO, Spiral model.
- Grady Booch: Object-oriented design, UML.
- Fred Brooks: Managed System 360 and OS 360. Wrote The Mythical Man-Month and No Silver Bullet.
- Edsger Dijkstra: Wrote Notes on Structured Programming, A Discipline of Programming and Go To Statement Considered Harmful, algorithms, formal methods, pedegogy.
- Michael Fagan: Software inspection.
- Tom Gilb: Evolutionary processes.
- Grace Hopper: The first compiler (Mark 1), COBOL, Nanoseconds.
- Watts Humphrey: Capability Maturity Model, headed (founded?) the Software Engineering Institute.
- Jean Ichbiah: Ada
- Bill Joy: Berkeley Unix, vi, Java.
- Brian Kernighan: C and Unix.
- Donald Knuth: Wrote The Art of Computer Programming, TeX, algorithms, literate programming
- Bertrand Meyer: Design by Contract, Eiffel programming language.
- Peter G. Neumann: Computer risks, ACM Sigsoft.
- David Parnas: Module design, social responsibility, professionalism.
- Jef Raskin: Developed the original Macintosh GUI
- Dennis Ritchie: C and Unix.
- Winston W. Royce: Waterfall model.
- Mary Shaw: Software architecture.
- Richard Stallman: Founder of the Free Software Foundation
- Linus Torvalds: Linux kernel, open source development.
- Will Tracz: Reuse, ACM Software Engineering Notes.
- Gerald Weinberg: Wrote The Psychology of Computer Programming.
- Jeanette Wing: Formal specifications.
- Ed Yourdon: Structured programming, wrote The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer.
See alsoList of programmersList of computer scientistsList of software moguls
Notable publicationsAbout Face by Alan Cooper, about user interface design.The Capability Maturity Model by Watts Humphrey. Written for the Software Engineering Institute, emphasizing management and process.The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond about open source development.The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer by Ed Yourdon predicts the end of software development in the U.S.Design Patterns by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides.Extreme Programming Explained by Kent BeckGo To Statement Considered Harmful by Edsger Dijkstra.The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks, about project management.Object-oriented Analysis and Design by Grady Booch.Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister.Principles of Software Engineering Management by Tom Gilb about evolutionary processes.The Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald Weinberg. Written as an independent consultant, partly about his years at IBM. by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, William Opdyke, and Don Roberts. See also Important publications in software engineering in CS.
Professional topicsDemographicsEconomicsEducationHistoryProfessionalism*Ethics*LicensingLegal*Intellectual property*Consumer protection
Odds and endsRelated fieldsTraditional engineering*Computer engineering*Electrical engineeringSoftware engineering*Domain engineering*Information engineering*Knowledge engineering*User interface engineeringArts and Sciences*Mathematics*Computer science*Information scienceApplications*Information systemsProgramming
Different languagesIn Chinese, software engineer is called ruan jian gong cheng shi —— 软件工程师In German, software engineering is called Softwaretechnik.In Spanish, software engineering is called Ingenierķa de software,In Norwegian, software engineering is called Programvareutvikling.
Miscellaneous and to doComplexity or scalingSoftware brittleness problemSecond system syndromeSoftware specialists share common language, terminology, certification, and so on.Traditional engineers frequently resort to a balance of factors to achieve optimization.Biology and biological engineering have other issues.Source code escrowFeature interaction problem
See alsoSWEBOK Software engineering body of knowledgeCCSE Computing curriculum for software engineeringComputer terms etymology, the origins of computer terms
External linksProfessional Organizations*British Computer Society*Association for Computing Machinery *IEEE Computer SocietyProfessionalism*SE Code of Ethics*Professional licensing in TexasEducation*CCSE Undergraduate curriculumStandards*IEEE Software Engineering Standards*Internet Engineering Task Force*ISOGovernment organizations *European Software Institute*Software Engineering InstituteAgile*Organization to promote Agile software development*Test driven development*Extreme programmingOther Organizations*Online community for software engineersDemographics*U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on SESurveys*David Redmiles page from the University of California siteOther*Full text in PDF from the NATO conference in Garmisch*Computer Risks Peter G. Neumann's risks column.
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