software engineering
English
editEtymology
editFirst attested in 1965 in service listings (in “systems software engineering”),[1] partly popularized by American computer scientists Anthony Oettinger and Margaret Hamilton later in the decade. In a 1966 letter to the members of the Association for Computing Machinery, listed by the Oxford English Dictionary as the term’s first attestation,[2] Oettinger wrote, “We must recognize ourselves […] as members of an engineering profession, be it hardware engineering or software engineering […]”.[3]
Noun
editsoftware engineering (uncountable)
- The subfield of engineering concerned with applying a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software.
Related terms
editTranslations
editsubfield of engineering concerned with the development, operation, and maintenance of software
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References
edit- ^ “Products and Services”, in Computers and Automation, 1965 June, page 44
- ^ “software engineering, n.”, in OED Online
, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
- ^ Oettinger, A. G. (1966 August) “President's Letter to the ACM Membership”, in Communications of the ACM, volume 9, number 8, , page 546
Further reading
edit- Pierre Bourque and Robert Dupuis, editors (2004 February 6), Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge - 2004 Version[1], IEEE Computer Society, →ISBN, pages 1-1