A Future for Software Engineering?

This paper suggests the need for a software engineering research community conversation about the future that the community would like to have. The paper observes that the research directions the community has taken in the past, dating at least back to the formative NATO Conferences in the late 1960's, have been driven largely by desire to meet the needs of practice. The paper suggests that the community should discuss whether it is now appropriate to balance this problem-solving-oriented research with a stronger complement of curiosity-driven research. This paper does not advocate what that balance should be. Neither does it advocate what curiosity driven research topics should be pursued (although illustrative examples are offered). It does does advocate the need for a community conversation about these questions.

[1]  Reidar Conradi,et al.  Impact of software engineering research on the practice of software configuration management , 2005, ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol..

[2]  Richard N. Taylor,et al.  Software Design and Architecture The once and future focus of software engineering , 2007, Future of Software Engineering (FOSE '07).

[3]  Leon J. Osterweil,et al.  Software Processes Are Software Too, Revisited: An Invited Talk on the Most Influential Paper of ICSE 9 , 1997, Proceedings of the (19th) International Conference on Software Engineering.

[4]  Manfred Broy,et al.  Software Engineering for Automotive Systems: A Roadmap , 2007, Future of Software Engineering (FOSE '07).

[5]  Christopher Alexander.  Notes on the Synthesis of Form , 1964 .

[6]  Wilhelm Schäfer,et al.  The Challenges of Building Advanced Mechatronic Systems , 2007, Future of Software Engineering (FOSE '07).

[7]  B. H. Liskov,et al.  Specification techniques for data abstractions , 1975, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[8]  D. L. Parnas,et al.  On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules , 1972, Software Pioneers.

[9]  B. Randell,et al.  Software Engineering Techniques: Report of a conference sponsored by the NATO Science Committee, Rome, Italy, 27-31 Oct. 1969, Brussels, Scientific Affairs Division, NATO , 1970 .

[10]  B. Randell,et al.  Software Engineering: Report of a conference sponsored by the NATO Science Committee, Garmisch, Germany, 7-11 Oct. 1968, Brussels, Scientific Affairs Division, NATO , 1969 .

[11]  Robert E. Park,et al.  Software Size Measurement: A Framework for Counting Source Statements , 1992 .

[12]  Bruce Elliott,et al.  Testing Computer Software , 1994 .

[13]  Brian Randell,et al.  Software engineering : report on a conference sponsored by the NATO Science Committee, Garmisch, Germany, 7th to 11th October 1968 , 1969 .

[14]  Michael S. Mahoney,et al.  Software as Science - Science as Software , 2000, ICHC.