Software Engineering as a Central Computer Science Discipline

Abstract

It is well known that quantitative changes, if sufficiently large, make for qualitative changes. The classical example is the automobile which represented a single order of magnitude improvement over the horse and buggy. But cars do not ride well over muddy roads. Therefore, we changed the face and the nature of our society by paving roads to accommodate this new reality. Computers represent six or seven orders of magnitude improvement over hand calculation. Again, we have changed society to better use this new reality. “The cashless society”, airline reservation systems, college boards, very large data bases, the space-military programs, are indicative of this change. By now computers, more properly computer systems, are crucial to society. Hence, they are studied in Universities just as civil engineering structures are.