Software Engineering’s Top Topics, Trends, and Researchers

For this theme issue on the 50th anniversary of software engineering (SE), Redirections offers an overview of the twists, turns, and numerous redirections seen over the years in the SE research literature. Nearly a dozen topics have dominated the past few decades of SE research—and these have been redirected many times. Some are gaining popularity, whereas others are becoming increasingly rare. This article is part of a theme issue on software engineering’s 50th anniversary.